Charles  Jo*selyn 


By  MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 


Life  Beyond  Death.  Being  a  Review  of  the 
World's  Beliefs  on  the  Subject,  a  Consideration 
of  Present  Conditions  of  Thought  and  Feeling, 
Leading  to  the  Question  as  to  whether  it  can  be 
Demonstrated  as  a  Fact.  To  which  is  added  an 
Appendix  Containing  Some  Hints  as  to  Personal 
Experiences  and  Opinions.  8°,  pp.  342.  $1.50 

The  Passing  and  the  Permanent  in  Religion. 

A  Plain  Treatment  of  the  Great  Essentials  of  Re- 
ligion, being  a  Sifting  from  these  of  Such  Things 
as  Cannot  Outlive  the  Results  of  Scientific,  His- 
torical and  Critical  Study,  so  Making  more  clearly 
Seen  "The  Things  which  Cannot  be  Shaken.' 
8°.  (By  mail,  $1.50).  Net,  $1.35. 

Can  Telepathy  Explain?  Results  of  Psychical 
Research.  16°.  (By  mail,  $1.10).  Net,  $1.00. 

Life's  Dark  Problems;  or,  Is  This  a  Good  World? 
12°.  (By  mail,  $1.50.)  Net,  $1.35. 


LIFE'S  DARK  PROBLEMS 


LIFE'S  DARK  PROBLEMS 

OR 

IS  THIS  A  GOOD  WORLD? 


BY 

MINOT  J.  SAVAGE,  D.D. 


Justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men. — MILTON 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Gbe  fnifcfeerbocfcet  press 
1905 


COPYRIGHT,  1905 

BY 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


T>\ 
CU«. 


Ube  ftnicfterbocftec  press,  flew  ffiorft 


CONTENTS 


615943 


PAGE 


I. — THE  ANSWER  OF  JOB         .        .        .        .  i 

II. — SOME  THEOLOGICAL  ANSWERS  .         .        .  24 

III. — THE  DIVINE  GOVERNMENT         .         .         .  44 

IV.— PAIN .63 

V. — LIFE'S  INCOMPLETENESS     ....  88 

VI. — MORAL  EVIL 114 

VII. — DEATH 133 

VIII. — ACCIDENTS  AND  CALAMITIES     .         .         .  153 

IX. — MENTAL  DISEASE  AND  DECAY  .        .         .  175 

X. — Is  GOD  A  FATHER  ? 195 

INDEX 215 


LIFE'S  DARK  PROBLEMS 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  ANSWER  OF  JOB 

IT  is  indeed  a  strange  scene  that  lies  before 
us  as  we  look  out  over  the  face  of  the  ^  rf/t 
earth  and  of  human  society.  It  is  not  at  all,  I 
suppose,  the  kind  of  world  that  any  of  us  would 
have  thought  a  wise  and  strong  and  good  God 
would  have  created.  It  seems  to  us  unreason- 


»   *•  Y       4P 

able,  and  it  seems  cruel. 

Note  the  conditions  beneath  our  feet,  among 
the  lowest  forms  of  life,  the  grasses,  the  shrubs,  ^ 

the  trees, — a  contest  going  on  none  the  less 
deadly  because  unconscious  and  unaccompa- 
nied by  pain.  The  earth  itself  is  a  strange 
home  for  a  sensitive  and  possibly  suffering 
people,  —  earthquakes,  volcanoes,  cyclones, 
tidal  waves,  pestilences,  poisons,  powers  of 
possible  evil,  on  every  hand. 

And,  when  we  come  up  the  next  step  higher, 
and  look  at  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  animal 


2  Life's  Dark  Problems 

world,  we  behold  a  scene  of  strife,  superficially 
beautiful  but  also  apparently  cruel. 

I  believe  that  on  the  whole  it  is  a  scene  of 
gladness  and  joy ;  and  yet  so  many  things  of 
another  and  opposite  character  are  thrust  in 
our  faces, — the  serpent  with  his  poisonous 
fangs  lying  in  wait,  the  spider  weaving  his  web 
for  his  victim,  the  hawk  ready  to  swoop  down 
upon  the  beautiful  singing  bird,  wild  beasts 
fighting  in  the  jungles,  fishes  devouring  one 
another  in  the  seas  and  rivers. 

So  it  is  no  wonder,  looking  at  it  in  this  way, 
that  Tennyson  should  talk  about 

"  Nature  red  in  tooth  and  claw 
With  ravin," 

that  he  should  speak  of  this  same  nature  as 
shrieking  against  the  creed  of  trust  in  the  uni- 
versal goodness  and  love. 

And,  when  we  front  this  human  nature  of 
ours,  we  find  something  more  cruel  than  we 
discover  among  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life, 
because  here  are  ingenuity,  able  to  devise  more 
cruel  methods, — hatred,  wars,  crimes  of  every 
kind,  disease,  pain,  thwarted  lives,  blighted 
hopes,  blasted  ambitions,  evils  physical,  mental, 
moral,  spiritual. 

And  the  great  problem  challenges  us  as  to 


The  Answer  of  Job  3 

whether  in  the  face  of  these  we  can  still  be- 
lieve in  the  goodness  of  things, — not  only  the 
goodness,  but  the  wisdom.  Some  of  the  great- 
est writers  of  the  world  have  tried  their  hand 
at  the  solution  of  this  enigma. 

Milton  tells  us  that  he  wrote  his  great  epic 
to  "justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men."  Pope 
writes  his  famous  Essay  "  to  vindicate  the 
ways  of  God  to  man."  And  so  writers  both 
of  prose  and  poem  have  tried  to  find  a  way 
through  this  great  darkness  which  has  so  be- 
wildered the  eyes  and  burdened  the  hearts  of 
the  race. 

tHere  is  the  creed  of  Pope : 
"  All  nature  is  but  art,  unknown  to  thee; 
All  chance,  direction,  which  thou  canst  not  see; 
All  discord,  harmony  not  understood; 
All  partial  evil,  universal  good; 
And,  spite  of  pride,  in  erring  reason's  spite, 
One  truth  is  clear,  Whatever  is,  is  right." 
Can  we  really  believe  that  ?     If  we  can,  why, 
jhen  we  can  sing  with  Browning, — 

"  God  's  in  His  heaven, 
All 's  right  with  the  world." 

But  let  us  see  what  John  Stuart  Mill  thought 
about  it.  Yet  note  the  significant  fact  that  he 
wrote  before  the  modern  theory  of  evolution 


4  Life's  Dark  Problems 

had  been  demonstrated.  And  this  theory  of 
evolution  completely  flanks  his  difficulty,  in  my 
judgment. 

What  is  it  that  Mill  says  ?  He  says  it  is 
plain,  in  the  face  of  the  evils  of  the  world,  that 
God  cannot  at  the  same  time  be  almighty  and 
all-wise  and  all-good.  If  He  is  almighty,  then 
He  either  fails  in  wisdom  or  goodness.  If  He 
is  all-wise,  then  He  is  not  strong  enough  to 
have  His  way,  or  else  He  is  not  quite  good 
enough  to  care.  If  He  is  all-good,  then  He 
must  lack  either  wisdom  or  power.  Because, 
if  He  were  all  three,  the  universe  would  be 
perfect. 

This  is  the  dilemma  which  this  great  thinker 
presented  to  the  world.  But  when  we  remem- 
ber that  the  universe  is  in  process,  and  not  yet 
complete,  we  have  a  right  to  decline  to  accept 
either  horn  of  Mr.  Mill's  dilemma,  and  still 
seek  for  a  solution  of  our  difficulty. 

One  or  two  points  preliminary  I  need  to 
present  with  as  much  clearness  and  force  as 
possible.  To  the  atheist,  to  him  who  does 
not  believe  in  God,  there  is  no  problem  to  dis- 
cuss. There  is  nothing  for  him  to  do  except 
to  take  the  position  of  the  Stoic,  and  bear 
things  as  best  he  may. 

If  we  here,  in  all  our  good  and  evil,  are  the 


The  Answer  of  Job  5 

Yi 

product  of   mere  blind,  unthinking,  unintelli-j 
gent  force,  why,  then  what  is  the  use  of  our| 
fretting  ?     There  is  nobody  to  complain  about, 
there  is  nobody  to  complain  to ;  there  is  no- 
body to  get  angry  with,  there  is  nobody  to 
charge  with  injustice.     There  is  no  court  of 
appeal,  there  is  no  hope  of  redress  ;  and  a  man 
is  as  foolish  to  get  bitter  about  it  and  angry  as 
he  would  be  to  fight  against  the  north-west 
wind  when  it  is  blowing. 

If  you  are  an  agnostic,  then,  again,  there  is  j 
no  problem.      You  simply  give  it  up.      You 
say,  I  do  not  know ;  and  all  you  can  do  is  to 
meet  things  as  well  as  possible,  and  bear  them 
as  best  you  may. 

The  problem  is  for  the  theist.  If  we  believe 
in  God,  then,  somehow,  somewhere,  somewhen, 
things  must  be  right.  That  is  what  believing 
in  God  means.  So  of  course  I  shall  assume, 
while  I  am  discussing  these  questions,  that  we 
occupy  the  position  of  the  theist.  We  believe 
in  God ;  and  yet  we  are  bewildered  and 
troubled  as  to  how  it  is  possible,  along  with 
the  belief  in  Him,  that  such  things  should  be. 

I  have  taken  the  Book  of  Job  as  a  first 
point  for  consideration,  because  in  Hebrew 
literature  and  in  Hebrew  religious  life — that 
literature  and  life  which  preceded  Christianity 


6  Life's  Dark  Problems 

and  out  of  which  Christianity  was  born  —  it 
is  the  first  formal  attempt  to  deal  with  these 
questions. 

It  seems  to  me,  then,  important  for  us  to 
consider  the  reach  of  this  attempt  to  settle  the 
problem.  How  near  does  it  come  to  it  ?  How 
much  help  is  there  for  us  in  the  Book  of  Job? 

Before  coming  to  that,  however,  directly,  I 
must  call  your  attention  to  the  popular  opinion 
of  the  time  as  to  the  cause  of  evil  in  the  world. 
You  will  find  that  the  whole  Old  Testament  is 
practically  at  one  here.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  the  author  of  this  book  had  not  heard 
anything  about  the  Garden  of  Eden  or  the 
fall  of  man  in  Adam. 

How  do  we  know  that  ?  Is  it  proof  that  he 
makes  no  reference  to  any  of  these  things  ?  I 
think  it  is,  when  we  consider  what  it  was  that 
he  attempted  to  do. 

Here  is  a  man  who  is  undertaking  to  explain 
the  fact  that  good  people  suffer  in  the  world ; 
and  he  knows  about  the  fall  of  man  and  the 
agency  of  Satan,  and  the  curse  of  God  pro- 
nounced on  the  inanimate  world,  and  the 
animal  world,  and  the  human  world  altogether. 
He  knows  that  this  is  the  ultimate  reason  ; 
and  yet  in  an  elaborate  and  prolonged  dis- 
cussion he  does  not  refer  to  it.  This,  of 


The  Answer  of  Job  7 

course,  is  incomprehensible.  We  feel  per- 
fectly sure  that  Job  knew  nothing  about  the 
doctrine  of  the  fall  of  man. 

Now,  what  was  the  reason  that  was  given 
throughout  the  Old  Testament  period  ?  For 
it  is  worth  your  while  to  note  that,  with  the 
exception  of  the  first  chapters  of  Genesis,  there 
is  nobody  in  the  Old  Testament  who  appears 
to  have  laid  any  stress  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
fall.  It  is  not  mentioned  anywhere  else.  It 
is  never  referred  to  as  explaining  anything. 

And  this  means,  of  course,  that  these  first 
chapters  of  Genesis  came  late  in  the  history  of 
Hebrew  thought,  although  they  appear  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Bible.  This  book  was  placed 
first  in  the  Bible,  not  because  it  was  the  first 
book  to  be  written,  but  because  it  was  sup- 
posed to  give  an  account  of  the  creation  of  the 
world,  and  so  that  was  the  natural  place  for  it. 

We  must  waive  one  side,  then,  the  whole 
question  of  the  fall  of  man,  so  far  as  our 
present  discussion  is  concerned. 

It  is  important  to  notice  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  ordinary  Hebrew  as  to  the  cause  of 
human  suffering.  Read — for  it  is  very  brief, 
and  it  sums  it  all  up — the  first  Psalm  : 

"  Blessed  is  the  man  that  walketh  not  in  the  counsel  of 
the  ungodly,  nor  standeth  in  the  way  of  sinners,  nor 


8  Life's  Dark  Problems 

sitteth  in  the  seat  of  the  scornful.  But  his  delight  is  in 
the  law  of  the  Lord,  and  in  his  law  doth  he  meditate  day 
and  night." 

And  what  is  the  result  ? 

"  And  he  shall  be  like  a  tree  planted  by  the  rivers  of 
water,  that  bringeth  forth  his  fruit  in  his  season  ;  his 
leaf  also  shall  not  wither  ;  and  whatsoever  he  doeth  shall 
prosper.  The  ungodly  are  not  so  :  but  are  like  the  chaff 
which  the  wind  driveth  away.  Therefore  the  ungodly 
shall  not  stand  in  the  judgment,  nor  sinners  in  the  con- 
gregation of  the  righteous.  For  the  Lord  knoweth  the 
way  of  the  righteous  :  but  the  way  of  the  ungodly  shall 
perish." 

f~ln  other  words,  the  teaching  of  the  Old 
Testament  is,  that  all  suffering  is  the  result 
of  personal  sin,  that  it  is  punishment  on  the 
part  of  God  for  disobedience  ;  and  that  means 
that  only  bad  people  suffer.  Good  people, 
of  course,  cannot  suffer.  How  can  they  be 
punished  when  they  have  done  no  wrong? 
How  can  a  righteous  God  afflict  them  with 
evils  when  they  have  been  true  to  Him  ?  That 
is  the  doctrine  of  the  Old  Testament  all  the 
way  through. 

Do  you  remember  those  words  of  the 
Psalmist  ?  I  am  afraid  that  when  we  do  read 
the  Bible  we  read  it  without  very  much  think- 
ing. "  I  have  been  young,"  he  says,  "  and  now 


The  Answer  of  Job  9 

am  old  ;  yet  have  I  not  seen  the  righteous  for- 
saken, nor  his  seed  begging  bread." 

Think  of  it !  He  had  never  seen  a  righteous 
man  in  trouble,  nor  the  children  of  a  righteous 
man  in  poverty !  His  experience  must  have 
been  rather  narrow,  or  else  he  must  have  been 
blinded  by  a  theory  so  as  not  to  notice  the 
facts. 

The  one  punishment  for  doing  wrong  in  the  j 
Old  Testament,  the  one  great,  final  punish- 
ment of  all,  is  death.  There  is  no  punishment' 
in  any  future  life  anywhere  in  the  Old  Testa?, 
ment.  All  reward  and  all  punishment  are^ 
confined  to  this  life ;  and  the  distinct  and 
definite  promise  is  that,  if  a  man  is  good,  he 
shall  have — what  ?  Health,  long  life,  children, 
business  prosperity,  honour  among  his  neigh- 
bours,— all  things  that  he  desires  shall  be  his  if 
he  is  obedient  to  God.  ,. 

And  all  things  that  he  does  not  desire  shall  be 
his  if  he  does  not  obey  Him.  That  is  the  law  of 
the  Old  Testament.  That  represents  the  pop- 
ular opinion  as  to  what  actually  took  place. 

And  you  can  see,  if  you  think  a  little  closely, 
how  cruel  it  sometimes  became.  It  became 
terribly  cruel  in  the  case  of  Job.  If  you  read 
the  Old  Testament  through,  you  will  find  that 
everywhere  it  is  good  things  for  the  good,  bad 


io  Life's  Dark  Problems 

things  for  the  bad,  in  this  life.  That  was  the 
popular  explanation  at  the  time  the  Book  of 
Job  was  written. 

I  say  this  without  knowing  when  that  was. 
I  suppose  there  is  no  possibility  of  settling  the 
definite  date  of  the  book.  We  do  not  know 
who  the  author  of  it  was,  we  do  not  know 
where  it  was  written  ;  but  that  makes  no  dif- 
ference with  our  position.  This  was  the  pop- 
ular conception  of  the  cause  of  human  suffering 
at  the  time  the  book  was  composed  and 
published. 

And  one  thing  for  you  to  note  is  that  this 
book  takes  a  definite  step  ahead  in  dealing 
with  these  dark  problems  of  human  life.  The 
author  of  the  Book  of  Job  had  found  out,  what 
we  know  perfectly  well,  that  the  ordinary  Old 
Testament  explanation  was  not  adequate  ;  that, 
though  there  might  be  some  truth  in  it,  it  was 
not  the  whole  truth,  and  that,  if  we  were  going 
to  understand  the  ways  of  God  to  men,  we 
must  go  deeper  than  this. 

We  all  know  how  far  from  the  truth  this  is. 
Just  consider  for  a  moment.  I  knew  a  case  of 
a  lady  last  summer,  one  of  the  truest,  sweet- 
est, noblest,  tenderest  women  in  all  the  world  ; 
and  yet  she  suffered  beyond  any  power  of  de- 
scribing it,  through  long  weary  days,  long 


The  Answer  of  Job  n 

weary  nights,  days  and  nights  stretching  out 
into  horrible  weeks,  and  weeks  into  horrible 
months. 

Why  could  not  she  have  died  peaceably  and 
quickly?  Why  must  she  suffer  all  this  pro- 
longed agony,  until  those  that  loved  her  best 
prayed  that  she  might  go  ?  Was  it  for  any- 
thing she  had  done  ?  To  any  one  who  knew 
her  the  question  is  absurd.  She  was  one  of 
the  sweetest  and  truest  women  in  all  the 
world. 

On  the  other  hand,  here  is  some  man  who 
has  broken  all  the  Ten  Commandments,  and 
hunted  after  others  to  break,  who,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  suffers  almost  nothing  at  all, — lives 
prosperously,  comfortably,  indulgently,  year 
in  and  year  out ;  and  then,  when  he  has  to  go, 
at  the  last  falls  asleep  in  a  moment,  and  escapes 
even  the  agony  of  dying. 

We  know  that  these  things  are  common- 
places. I  knew  a  young  man,  just  on  the 
verge  of  a  life  success,  noble,  sweet,  true,  pure, 
having  shown  that  he  had  wings,  a  promise  of 
power  and  fame  ;  and  yet  in  a  moment  his 
life  was  taken  away. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  know  another  young 
man  ;  and  he  has  devoted  himself  since  he  was 
old  enough  to  think  to  doing  evil  year  after 


12  Life's  Dark  Problems 

year.  He  has  broken  his  father's  heart,  and 
been  a  perpetual  drain  on  his  father's  purse. 
This  father  has  worked  to  shield  him  from  dis- 
grace, to  keep  him  from  the  penitentiary ;  and 
he  has  been  a  burden  and  a  sorrow  to  every- 
body who  knew  him.  But  his  health  is  good ; 
and,  so  far  as  any  one  can  see,  there  is  the 
prospect  of  a  long  life  ahead  of  him. 

You  might  multiply  these  cases  by  the 
hundred.  Here  is  a  man  whose  character  is  un- 
impeachable, but  who  is  poor.  He  has  strug- 
gled with  poverty  all  his  life  long.  Here,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  a  man  who  has  no  princi- 
ples, and,  apparently,  no  conscience  ;  and  he  is 
a  business  success,  he  is  rich.  No  relation  is 
visible  between  the  results  in  either  case  and 
the  moral  character  of  the  two  men.  And  so 
in  every  direction. 

I  have  known  of  persons  artistic,  musical, 
lovers  of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  fair,  who 
would  have  given  half  a  life  to  have  been  able 
to  cross  the  ocean  and  see  the  marvels  of 
beauty  that  are  to  be  discovered  there ;  and 
they  have  never  been  able. 

I  have  seen  in  Europe  by  the  dozen  vulgarly 
wealthy  people,  with  no  appreciation  of  archi- 
tecture or  painting  or  music  or  sculpture  or 
anything  of  the  kind,  wasting  on  follies  or 


«s  . 

The  Answer  of 


vices  a  hundred  times  more  than  would  be 
needed  to  satisfy  the  hunger  and  thirst  of  the 
noble  souls. 

Now  these  things  are  not  equal,  according 
to  any  measure  which  human  equality  has  de- 
vised. -^rlf  we  had  had  the  planning  of  the 
world,  we  certainly  should  not  have  made  these 
things  so. 

We  know,  then,  that  it  is  not  fair  or  true  oft 
right  to  charge  a  man  with  being  a  bad  man 
because  he  is  poor,  or  because  he  is  sick,  or  be- 
cause he  has  lost  his  friends,  or  because  of  suf-| 
fering  of  any  kind.  We  know  that  there  is 
no  necessary  relation  between  these  two  facts. 
As  much  as  this  the  writer  of  the  Book  of  Job 
has  discovered,  so  that  his  teaching  is  a  distinct 
and  definite  step  ahead,  so  far  as  the  popular 
opinion  of  his  age  was  concerned. 

And  now  let  us  consider  for  a  little  this 
poem  of  Job,  its  story  and  its  attempt  to  solve 
the  difficulty. 

It  is  unfortunate,  so  far  as  the  literary  value 
of  parts  of  the  Bible  are  concerned,  that  we 
have  been  accustomed  to  treat  them  purely 
as  religious  productions.  The  Book  of  Job  is 
a  poem  with  a  prose  prologue  and  epilogue. 
And  how  does  it  rank  ?  If  you  should  trans- 
late it  and  publish  it  in  a  book  by  itself  as 


14  Life's  Dark  Problems 

a  poem,  it  would  rank  with  perhaps  the  six 
greatest  of  all  the  world. 

It  may  stand  unshamed  beside  Homer, 
^Eschylus,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Goethe. 
A  great  poem.  There  are  a  few  of  the  Psalms 
which  are  unsurpassed  in  the  lyric  literature 
of  the  world.  There  are  parts  of  the  Second 
Isaiah  which  in  sublimity  and  power  and 
grandeur  are  equal,  perhaps,  to  the  best  in 
Job ;  but  Job  has  this  advantage, — it  is  a  com- 
plete and  formal  and  finished  treatise  by  itself, 
and  not  merely  a  set  of  proclamations  such  as 
you  find  in  the  Second  Isaiah. 

Now  what  is  this  Book  of  Job,  so  far  as  it  is 
an  attempt  to  answer  our  question  ?  Of  course 
you  are  familiar  with  the  story. 

In  a  famous  city  of  the  East  lived  a  famous 
man,  the  greatest  of  his  whole  country,  the 
wealthiest,  the  man  occupying  the  highest 
position  ;  and  he  was  faultless  in  character, 
upright  and  ideal  in  every  way. 

And,  because  he  was  this  kind  of  a  man, 
according  to  the  popular  ideals  he  had  been 
blessed  in  every  way.  He  had  seven  sons 
and  three  daughters.  He  had  thousands  of 
cattle  and  sheep  and  asses.  He  occupied  a 
high  position  in  the  gates  of  his  city.  But 
even  this  man,  although  it  contradicted  all  the 


The  Answer  of  Job  15 

theories  of  the  age,  did  not  prove  to  be  free 
from  suffering. 

The  story  goes  that  God  is  holding  court 
one  day,  and  the  angels  are  gathered  about 
Him,  when  Satan,  an  evil  spirit,  not  yet  fully 
developed  into  the  modern  Devil, — not  shut  up 
in  hell,  but  free  to  travel  whither  he  would, — 
appears  among  the  other  sons  of  God.  And 
God  calls  his  attention  to  His  servant  Job,  and 
asks  him  if  he  had  observed  how  remarkable 
he  was.  But  he  who  has  no  faith  in  human 
goodness,  without  a  satisfactory  reason  for  it, 
answered  that  Job  had  been  blessed  in  every 
way  and  had  no  reason  for  being  bad.  So  he 
said :  Now  You  destroy  his  property,  touch 
his  prosperity,  and  see  what  will  be  the  result : 
he  will  curse  You  to  Your  face. 

Whereupon  God  said :  I  turn  him  over  into 
your  hands.  You  can  try  him,  but  do  not 
touch  his  person.  You  have  full  control  over 
all  that  he  owns — all  that  belongs  to  him. 
And  then,  suddenly,  one  series  of  calamities 
follows  another.  His  oxen,  sheep,  and  asses 
are  captured  or  destroyed.  And  then  his  child- 
ren, the  seven  sons  and  the  three  daughters, 
are  feasting  together,  and  a  whirlwind  comes 
and  seizes  the  building  where  they  are  sitting, 
and  overwhelms  them  in  sudden  ruin. 


1 6  Life's  Dark  Problems 

And  Job  sees  everything  that  he  cares  for  on 
earth  stripped  away.  Still,  he  does  not  com- 
plain or  utter  one  word  of  fault  against  his 
Maker. 

Again  the  sons  of  God  are  gathered  in  the 
court  of  heaven,  and  Satan  appears  among 
them ;  and  God  calls  his  attention  to  the  fact 
that  his  attempt  has  proved  a  failure.  Where- 
upon Satan  says  :  Yes,  but  everything  a  man 
has  will  he  give  for  his  life.  Touch  his 
body  now,  and  see  what  will  be  the  result. 
And  God  says :  I  give  him  then,  as  far  as 
his  physical  condition  is  concerned,  completely 
into  your  hands  :  only  spare  his  life. 

And  then  Job  is  afflicted  with  a  loathsome  dis- 
ease from  head  to  foot,  and  sits  desolate  in  the 
ashes  ;  and  even  his  wife  turns  against  him, 
and  wonders  why  he  does  not  curse  God  and 
die.  And  still  he  brings  no  railing  accusation 
against  his  Maker. 

Here,  then,  the  author  of  Job  holds  up  this 
wonderful  problem  for  the  people  who  had 
been  accustomed  to  believe  that  suffering 
meant  sin  of  some  kind.  Here  is  this  per- 
fect man  suffering  everything.  But  it  seems 
curious  to  me  that  Job  never  finds  out  what 
had  been  going  on  behind  the  scenes.  God 
does  not  tell  him  why  He  had  afflicted  him 


The  Answer  of  Job  17 

in  this  way.  He  does  not  know  anything 
about  Satan's  agency  in  the  matter. 

But,  while  he  sits  thus  disconsolate,  his  three 
friends  come  to  visit  him  ;  and  no  wonder  their 
poor  comfort  has  turned  their  names  into  a 
proverb.  They  come,  and  sit  down  with  Job  ; 
and  though  they  had  been  his  friends,  and 
honoured  and  known  him  all  his  life,  they  are 
so  filled  with  the  idea  that  suffering  must  mean 
wrong-doing  that  they  can  think  of  no  other 
explanation.  And  so  through  long  chapters 
they  lay  all  sorts  of  sins  to  his  charge,  and  ask 
him  why  he  conceals  what  he  has  been  guilty 
of,  why  he  does  not  confess,  why  he  adds 
hypocrisy  to  his  other  crimes. 

The  three  friends  will  not  believe  for  a  mo- 
ment that  God  is  anything  but  just ;  and,  if  He 
is  just,  of  course  Job's  suffering  means  punish- 
ment for  something  that  he  has  been  doing. 
The  main  part  of  the  Book  of  Job,  sublime  in 
poetry  and  beautiful  in  its  argument,  is  taken 
up  with  playing  on  different  phases  of  this  one 
theme. 

Job  meantime  protests  that  he  is  innocent, 
says  he  wishes  he  could  find  someway  of  com- 
ing into  the  presence  of  his  Judge  and  plead- 
ing his  cause  with  Him ;  he  wishes  there  was 
some  one  as  a  mediator  to  stand  between  him 


1 8  Life's  Dark  Problems 

and  his  Judge ;  and  it  is  wonderful  the  charac- 
ter that  is  revealed  when,  even  in  the  last  ex- 
tremity he  has  given  up  hope,  he  says:  He 
will  slay  me  ;  I  have  no  doubt  He  will  slay  me  ; 
yet  I  will  trust  in  Him. 

After  these  three  friends  have  exhausted 
themselves,  then  comes  the  fourth ;  and  he 
deals  in  the  same  kind  of  criticisms,  varying 
them  somewhat  by  talking  about  the  mystery 
of  the  universe. 

But  at  last  God  Himself  appears,  and  speaks 
out  of  the  whirlwind  ;  and  what  does  He  say  ? 
He  says  nothing  about  what  had  been  going 
on  behind  the  scenes.  He  does  not  tell  Job 
that  He  has  been  testing  him.  He  does  not 
tell  him  that  Satan  has  had  anything  to  do 
with  it.  He  rebukes  him  for  his  presumption, 
and  then  overwhelms  him  through  wonderful 
chapter  after  chapter  by  portraying  the  inex- 
plicable marvels  of  the  universe,  and  saying  to 
him :  If  you  cannot  answer  these  questions,  if 
you  cannot  understand  these  mysteries,  why 
should  you  presume  to  comprehend  the  deal- 
ings of  the  Infinite  One? 

That  is  God's  answer  to  the  sufferer.  He 
turns  then,  and  rebukes  the  friends  who  have 
misjudged  him,  condemns  them  utterly,  and 
says  they  can  be  forgiven  only  after  Job  has 


The  Answer  of  Job  19 

offered  a  sacrifice  and  made  prayers  in  their 
behalf. 

Then,  at  the  end,  comes  that  strange  resti- 
tution. Job  has  seven  more  sons  given  him, 
and  three  daughters,  the  most  beautiful  women 
in  the  East ;  and  he  has  twice  as  many  yoke  of 
oxen,  and  twice  as  many  sheep  and  asses. 
His  prosperity  is  doubled,  and  the  book  ends ; 
and  where  are  we,  so  far  as  any  solution  of  our 
problem  is  concerned  ? 

We  cannot  to-day  take  as  an  explanation  of 
anything  that  goes  on  in  the  world  the  agency 
of  evil  spirits.  We  cannot  believe  that  God 
permits  evil  spirits  in  the  other  world  to  inter- 
fere with  the  forces  of  nature,  to  produce 
storms,  tempests,  earthquakes,  volcanic  erup- 
tions, pestilences,  disease,  evils  of  any  kind. 

In  the  first  place,  we  do  not  believe  there 
are  any  spirits  that  have  power  over  the  forces 
of  nature ;  it  is  utterly  unscientific  and  incom- 
prehensible to  the  mind  of  any  intelligent  per- 
son ;  and  we  cannot  believe  that  any  good 
God  would  let  any  evil  spirit  do  it,  even  if 
there  were  those  who  were  capable  of  it. 

We  have  come  at  last  to  recognise  the  fact 
that   power   does   not   confer  irresponsibility. 
The  old  theory  was  that  might  meant  right.  I 
The  chief   of   a   tribe   could   not   do    wrong. 


20  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Whatever  he  did  was  accepted.  But  to-day 
we  say  that,  if  a  man  authorises  an  agent  or 
permits  an  agent  to  do  a  certain  thing,  he  is 
responsible.  "  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  do  right  ?  "  Shall  we  not  think  of  God 
as  being  as  good  as  we  expect  men  to  be  ? 

So,  if  it  were  possible  for  God  to  author- 
ise or  permit  an  evil  spirit  to  do  a  certain 
thing,  he  would  be  responsible  for  the  result. 
It  hardly  needs  saying  this  to-day  ;  and  yet 
our  Puritan  forefathers  believed  it  all  And 
you  will  find  people  talking  to-day  as  though 
they  believed  it,  when,  if  you  ask  them  the 
direct  question,  probably  they  would  deny 
it. 

Another  point.  We  cannot  any  longer  be- 
lieve that  God  would  put  a  good  man  through 
a  course  of  suffering,  inflict  evil  upon  him 
merely  as  the  result  of  a  whim  on  His  part,  to 
test  him,  to  prove  that  he  was  superior  to 
wrong-doing.  We  cannot  believe  that  such  is 
the  explanation  of  any  of  the  sufferings  of  the 
world. 

God  has  no  right  to  subject  His  children 
to  unnecessary  pain  or  disease  or  heartache 
merely  because  He  is  God,  merely  because  He 
has  the  power. 

There  is  another  thing  that  is  a  part  of  the 


The  Answer  of  Job  21 

explanation  of  the  Book  of  Job  which  cannot 
help  us  much  to-day.  They  tell  us  at  the  last 
that  Job  had  all  his  losses  made  up  to  him.— 
Did  he?  He  had  seven  sons  and  three 
daughters  given  him ;  but  they  were  not  the 
ones  he  had  lost.  It  is  all  very  well  to  double 
the  amount  of  his  property  loss.  He  might 
bear  that,  say  that  was  adequate  compensa-^ 
tion  ;  but  if  God  has  taken  away  my  child, 
whom  I  loved  as  I  love  my  life,  would  it  be 
any  compensation  to  me  to  give  me  another 
child  ? 

I  might  indeed  love  the  other  child ;  but 
what  of  that  first  overwhelming  loss, — a  loss 
that  the  years  cannot  take  away  ?  There  is  no 
explanation  there. 

Then  the  last  one  of  all  is  simply  to  over- 
whelm us,  shut  our  mouths  and  drown  us,  so 
to  speak,  in  the  sense  of  God's  mysteries.  All 
Jehovah  does  when  He  appears  is  to  ask  Job 
questions  that  he  cannot  answer,  and  over- 
whelm him  with  the  thought  of  his  inability  to 
comprehend  the  Infinite. 

Is  that  any  answer?  Does  that  help  us  to 
bear  our  burdens  ?  Indeed,  one  thing  is  true.1 
If  I  could  be  perfectly  certain  that  I  have  a 
Father  in  heaven,  that  He  loves  me,  that  He 
is  almighty,  that  He  is  all-wise, — if  I  can  be 


22  Life's  Dark  Problems 

perfectly  certain  of  that,  and  if  I  can  know  that 
He  asks  me  to  wait  without  understanding 
something  that  He  is  doing,  why  of  course  I 
can  wait.  That  is  easy  enough. 

A  boy  can  wait  if  his  father  tells  him  that 
he  knows  what  he  is  doing,  and  will  explain  it 
to  him  by  and  by  when  he  gets  ready.  Of 
course  he  can. 

But,  so  far  as  the  great  modern  heart  of  the 
world  is  concerned,  it  is  this  very  question  of 
the  fatherhood,  the  love,  the  justice,  the  power 
in  the  heavens,  that  is  in  question. 

I  am  overwhelmed  with  letters  from  all  over 
the  world  bearing  on  these  problems.  I  re- 
ceived one  from  a  lovely  old  lady  down  in  the 
State  of  Maine  some  months  ago.  In  it  she 
asked  me  pitifully,  tearfully,  as  to  whether  she 
can  any  longer  believe  that  she  has  a  Father  in 
heaven.  She  said,  I  used  to  believe  that ;  but 
in  presence  of  the  calamities,  the  sorrows, 
the  sufferings,  the  evils  of  the  world,  I  am  be- 
ginning to  wonder  whether  I  really  have  one. 
That  is  the  question. 

So,  simply  to  tell  us  that  the  universe  is 
a  mystery  we  cannot  fathom  does  not  help  us 
to  wait  patiently  in  the  presence  of  these  great 
sorrows  that  we  cannot,  on  that  theory  alone, 
explain. 


The  Answer  of  Job  23 

The  Book  of  Job,  then,  although  it  was  a 
step  ahead  for  its  age,  does  not  help  us  much. 
We  must  go  on  with  our  study,  trusting  that 
by  and  by  we  may  find  a  better  answer. 


CHAPTER  II 
SOME  THEOLOGICAL  ANSWERS 

AS  the  Book  of  Job  was  the  first  formal  at- 
tempt made  on  the  part  of  anybody  con- 
nected with  the  Hebrew  people  to  solve  this 
problem  as  to  the  relation  of  suffering  and  evil 
to  the  goodness  of  the  world,  we  have  con- 
sidered that  first.  We  found  no  satisfactory 
answer  there  to  our  question.  I  propose  now 
to  ask  you  to  consider  some  of  the  theological 
attempts  that  have  been  made  at  an  explana- 
tion. 

If  we  go  back  towards  the  beginning  of  hu- 
man history,  we  shall  find  that  this  difficulty  did 
not  really  exist.  In  other  words,  the  theory 
of  things  was  such  that  suffering  and  evil  found 
an  easy  explanation.  The  explanation,  when 
we  consider  their  intellectual  and  moral  point 
of  view,  was  a  very  natural  and  satisfactory  one. 

What  was  it?  They  believed  that  when 
people  died,  men  and  women,  they  did  not 
cease  to  exist ;  they  only  passed  into  an  invisi- 
ble world ;  and  this  invisible  world  was  not 

24 


Some  Theological  Answers         25 

far  off  somewhere ;  it  was  close  around  us. 
The  spirits  of  the  dead  were  just  the  same  kind 
of  people  that  they  used  to  be  here.  Some  of 
them  were  good,  some  of  them  were  bad,  vin- 
dictive, mischievous,  evil ;  and  they  were  en- 
dowed, in  the  beliefs  of  the  people  of  the  time, 
with  an  indefinite  extension  of  the  power  which 
they  used  to  possess  here.  They  were  not  only 
as  strong  as  they  were  here,  but  a  good  deal 
stronger  ;  and  they  were  supposed  to  have  con- 
trol over  what  we  regard  to-day  as  natural 
forces. 

So  these  invisible  people  were  everywhere. 
They  haunted  the  places  were  they  used  to  live, 
where  their  bodies  were  buried;  they  were  in  all 
the  air,  mingling  with  all  the  life  of  the  time  ; 
and  the  good  ones,  the  friendly  ones,  were 
ready  to  help,  and  the  bad  ones  were  ready  to 
harm.  And,  when  anything  evil  occurred,  this 
was  their  ready,  their  natural  explanation :  it 
was  the  work  of  some  mischievous  or  malignant 
or  evil  spirit. 

It  was  supposed,  for  example,  that  they  had 
a  certain  control  over  natural  forces.  They 
could  produce  tempests,  they  could  blight 
the  crops,  they  could  interfere  with  all  sorts 
of  occupations,  they  could  produce  disease 
and  death.  And  so,  whenever  anything  evil 


26  Life's  Dark  Problems 

occurred,  it  was  very  easy  to  attribute  it  to  the 
work  of  some  one  of  these  inimical  and  in- 
visible powers. 

They  had  not  risen  at  that  time  to  any  con- 
ception whatever  of  what  we  regard  to-day  as 
natural  forces  and  natural  laws.  Everything 
that  happened,  good  or  bad,  was  the  work  of 
some  one  of  these  invisible  persons. 

They  had  then  here  no  special  problem. 
There  was  no  necessity  on  their  part  to  recon- 
cile these  things  that  occurred  to  the  goodness 
of  any  ruling  Power.  These  good  forces  did 
what  they  could  to  help  them.  Sometimes  they 
could  fight  against  and  thwart  the  purposes  of 
the  evil  ones ;  but  all  they  could  do — if  these 
invisible  friends  did  not  interfere  to  protect 
them — was  to  placate  or  buy  off  these  wicked 
gods, — so  far  as  they  were  able,  to  try  and  win 
their  favour. 

These  ideas  were  not  outgrown  even  in  what 
we  regard  with  so  much  admiration  as  the  palmy 
tjlays  of  Greece  and  Rome.  The  gods  were 
sjome  of  them  good,  some  of  them  bad,  some  of 
them  friendly,  some  of  them  hostile.  They 
were  open  to  the  same  kinds  of  motives  and 
influences  that  people  were  in  this  world. 

As  an  illustration,  take  the  famous  ten  years' 
siege  of  the  city  of  Troy.  What  was  the  cause 


Some  Theological  Answers         27 

of  it  ?  Why,  three  of  the  goddesses  entered 
into  competition  as  to  which  of  them  should  be 
regarded  as  the  most  beautiful ;  and  Paris  was 
made  the  arbiter.  Each  one  offered  him  some 
prize,  tried  to  bribe  him  to  a  judgment  in  her 
favour.  He  decided  for  Venus  ;  and  of  course 
the  other  two  were  made  the  enemies  not  only 
of  him  but  of  his  whole  people. 

And,  as  we  read  the  story  of  the  siege  as 
recorded  in  Homer,  it  is  seen  that  Juno  was 
always  fighting  against  the  Trojans,  and  Venus 
was  doing  what  she  could  to  protect  them. 
They  were  each  trying  to  get  the  aid  of  Jupiter 
and  to  have  him  favour  her  side  ;  and  they  even 
descended  into  the  conflict,  and  took  part  in 
the  battles,  like  the  other  warriors. 

You  see  how  comparatively  modern  these 
ideas  are, — that  the  good  and  the  evil  of  this 
life  are  produced  by  the  good  and  evil  powers 
in  conflict  in  the  other  life. 

When  we  come  to  the  beginning  of  definite 
Hebrew  history  or  when  we  begin  with  that 
which  is  farther  back  and  more  or  less  legend- 
ary, we  find  that  for  some  unexplained  reason 
the  Hebrews  had  little  belief  in  these  other- 
world  forces. 

From  the  time  of  Moses  until  the  Captivity 
these  ideas  of  other-worldly  influences  playing 


28  Life's  Dark  Problems 

a  part  in  the  life  of  men  had  very  little  to  do 
with  Hebrew  belief.  They  did  believe  after  a 
fashion  in  spirits  in  the  other  world.  There 
was,  so  to  express  it,  a  sort  of  submerged  belief 
of  this  kind  ;  but  it  plays  no  part  in  the  formal 
religion  or  in  the  definite  teachings  of  the 
Hebrew  people. 

We  know  that  they  did  have  some  belief  of 
this  kind,  because  it  is  witnessed  to  us  by  such 
stories  as  that  of  the  witch  of  Endor  and  by 
the  fact  that  the  lawgivers  prohibited  people 
having  anything  to  do  with  u  familiar  spirits." 
This  shows  that  they  were  more  or  less  be- 
lieved in. 

But  there  came  into  the  Hebrew  creed  another 
explanation  of  the  existence  of  evil  which  has 
played  so  important  a  part  in  Christian  theo- 
ology  that  we  must  give  it  a  little  definite  and 
careful  attention.  We  do  not  know  just  when 
it  appeared.  The  story  is  contained  to-day  in 
the  Book  of  Genesis ;  but  the  early  prophets 
of  the  eighth  century  before  Christ  seem  not  to 
have  known  anything  about  it,  and  it  bears 
traces  of  Persian  and  Babylonian  influence,  so 
that  it  may  not  have  taken  definite  shape  in 
the  Hebrew  mind  until  down  towards  the 
period  of  the  Captivity. 

The  story  is  placed  in  the  first  book  in  the 


Some  Theological  Answers         29 

Bible,  not  because  that  was  the  first  book 
written,  but  because  it  contains  what  was  be- 
lieved to  be  the  history  of  the  beginnings. 

What  is  this  explanation  ?  It  is  nothing 
less  than  the  story  of  the  Fall  of  Man.  It  is 
worth  while  to  note  certain  features  of  it,  to 
which,  perhaps,  less  attention  has  been  given 
than  they  deserve. 

It  came  to  be  believed  by  the  Hebrews  that 
God  created  the  first  man  and  woman  perfect^ 
and  placed  them  in  a  garden.  Up  to  this 
time  no  evil  of  any  kind  existed  ;  everything 
was  perfectly  good.  All  was  happiness  and 
peace.  There  was  no  warfare  among  the 
lower  animals  ;  there  were  no  noxious  weeds  or 
growths  of  any  kind.  It  was  a  perfect  world. 

God  laid  one  prohibition,  and  one  only,  on 
the  first  man  :  he  was  not  to  eat  of  the  fruit  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge,  whatever  that  might  be. 
He  disobeys ;  and  so  we  are  told  that,  as  the 
result  of  that,  all  evil  came  into  the  world. 
The  animals,  who  had  been  peaceful  up  to 
that  time,  began  to  slay  and  prey  upon  each 
other.  The  ground  was  cursed,  so  that  it 
brought  forth  its  crops  with  difficulty.  It  was 
threatened  that  Eve  and  her  descendants 
should  bear  children  in  pain  and  suffering  as 
the  result  of  this  eating  of  the  forbidden  fruit. 


30  Life's  Dark  Problems 

And    last    of   all,    death   was    pronounced 

against  them  as  a  penalty.     Not  only  death 

for  them,  but  for  all  their  descendants  in  all 

time,  and  suffering  and  pain  and  every  kind  of 

;  evil  for  all  time. 

Not  only  that.  Those  who  were  not 
specially  saved  by  a  scheme  of  redemption 
which  was  revealed  ages  after,  and  of  which, 
of  course,  the  people  at  that  time  could  know 
nothing, — they  were  to  suffer  the  penalty  of 
everlasting  torment  in  the  next  life. 

Here,  then,  is  the  explanation  which  for 
ages  dominated  Hebrew  thought,  and  which 
for  the  last  nineteen  hundred  years  has  domin- 
ated Christian  theology.  It  has  been  believed 
that  this  was  an  adequate,  satisfactory,  ra- 
tional, and  moral  explanation  of  the  coming  of 
evil  into  the  world.  Let  us  look  at  it  for  just 
a  moment. 

In  the  first  place,  if  you  think  of  it  carefully, 
you  will  see  that  Adam  had  no  sort  of  fair  pro- 
bation. Dr.  Edward  Beecher,  the  elder  and 
hardly  less  famous  brother  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  published  a  book  some  years  ago  in 
which  he  demonstrated  at  length  that  Adam 
had  no  fair  probation.  In  order  to  do  that, 
he  must  have  been  able  to  look  down  the  ages 
and  foresee  for  all  time,  not  only,  but  through 


Some  Theological  Answers         31 

eternity,  the  results  of  his  action.  He  must 
have  been  perfectly  free  to  choose,  and  must 
have  chosen  with  an  eye  to  all  the  conditions 
and  all  the  results. 

Of  course,  it  is  absurd  for  us  to  suppose  for 
a  minute  that  he  had  any  such  intelligence, 
that  he  had  any  such  foresight,  that  he  com- 
prehended in  all  its  fulness  what  he  was  doing. 

It  was  threatened  against  him  that  he  should 
die,  that  was  all.  Nothing  was  said,  mark 
you,  by  the  Creator  at  that  time  about  all  of  his 
descendants  dying,  nothing  was  said  about  any 
future  punishment  in  another  life.  He  is 
simply  threatened  with  death,  if  he  eats  the 
fruit  of  that  tree. 

And  here  comes  another  very  mysterious, 
intelligent  Power,  and  talks  with  him,  and  tells 
him  it  is  pure  jealousy ;  says  that  God  knows 
perfectly  well  that  he  will  not  die,  he  will  be- 
come very  wise,  and  know  good  and  evil,  if  he 
eats  of  the  fruit.  And  Adam  was  not  quite 
sure  which  he  was  to  believe.  At  any  rate 
there  was  no  fair  probation. 

Then  there  is  another  consideration  for  us 
to  take  into  account.  Even  if  Adam  had  un- 
derstood all  about  it,  had  known  perfectly 
what  he  was  doing,  had  chosen  deliberately, 
think  of  another  feature  of  the  case. 


32  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Why  should  I,  five  or  six  thousand  years 
(according  to  the  popular  chronology)  after 
that  time,  be  suffering,  be  regarded  as  a  sinner, 
be  treated  as  a  victim  of  God's  anger,  for  what 
somebody  else  did  over  whose  action  I  had 
absolutely  no  control  ?  Why  should  I  be  in 
danger  of  eternal  torment  because  a  man  six 
thousand  years  ago  chose  to  eat  an  apple 
after  he  was  forbidden  to  do  it  ? 

Think  for  an  instant.  It  is  simply  amazing 
that  intelligent,  moral  men  can  have  consid- 
ered and  discussed  and  weighed  a  problem  like 
this  for  centuries.  It  is  simply  hideously  un- 
just and  immoral, — the  whole  conception. 

I  say  deliberately,  if  there  were  a  Power  in 
the  universe  capable  of  doing  any  such  thing, 
that  there  never  has  lived  a  man  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world  that  was  one-thousandth 
part  as  bad  as  he. 

Think  of  explaining  the  existence  of  pain 
and  sin  and  suffering  in  that  sort  of  fashion  ! 

But  there  are  two  or  three  other  considera- 
tions. In  the  first  place  we  know  perfectly 
well  to-day — there  is  not  a  shadow  of  question 
about  it — that  thorns  and  thistles  and  poison- 
ous growths  and  vipers  were  in  existence  be- 
fore man  came  on  the  planet  at  all.  How,  then, 
could  they  have  been  the  result  of  his  action  ? 


Some  Theological  Answers         33 

There  have  been  curious,  ingeniously  ludi- 
crous attempts  to  get  over  this  difficulty.  I 
remember  a  doctor  of  divinity  saying  that  God 
placed  these  things  on  the  earth  before  man 
appeared,  because  He  knew  that  man  was 
going  to  fall  after  he  did  appear. 

Then  there  is  another  feature  of  the  immor- 
ality of  this  solution.  I  was  taught,  when  I 
was  in  the  Divinity  School,  that  God  created 
Adam  in  such  a  way  and  so  circumstanced  him 
that  he  would  fall ;  and  yet  He  held  Adam  re- 
sponsible for  it  because  He  did  not  in  some 
outright  fashion  make  him  fall.  He  knew  that 
He  was  going  to  create  him  on  purpose  to  do 
it ;  it  was  essential  to  the  scheme  of  things  that 
he  should ;  and  yet  Adam  is  held  responsible, 
and  we  are  to  suffer  for  it  for  all  time  and 
eternity. 

And  there  is  a  Presbyterian  doctor  of  divin- 
ity, a  famous  theological  teacher  of  my  time, 
and  whose  books  I  have  had  in  my  library, 
who  has  actually  taught  that  a  babe,  when 
first  born,  is  guilty  in  the  presence  of  God. 

For  what  ?  We  must  leave  him  to  explain. 
But  there  is  one  other  consideration.  All  edu- 
cated people  to-day  know  that  there  never  was 
any  fall  of  man  or  any  Eden.  The  story  is  of 
no  more  moral  or  spiritual  consequence  than 


34  Life's  Dark  Problems 

are  the  myths  of  Hercules  or  of  Jason  and  the 
Golden  Fleece.  It  is  the  ascent  of  man  and 
not  his  fall  with  which  we  have  to  deal. 

We  must  waive  the  fall  of  man  aside  then, 
as  a  rational  explanation  of  the  existence  of 
evil  in  the  world. 

Let  us  continue  our  search.  When  we  come 
to  the  New  Testament,  do  we  find  any  real 
help  in  our  difficulty?  Let  me  ask  you  to 
think,  very  candidly  and  clearly.  The  Gos- 
pels know  nothing  about  the  fall  of  man,  Paul 
was  the  first  of  the  New  Testament  writers. 
His  whole  theology  starts  with  and  hinges  on 
the  doctrine  of  the  fall,  and  Pauline  theo- 
logy has  dominated  Christendom  for  the  last 
nineteen  hundred  years. 

Paul  teaches  that  evil  came  into  the  world 
by  the  fall  of  the  first  Adam.  We  are  to  be 
delivered  from  evil  by  the  suffering  and  death 
of  the  second  Adam.  So  out  of  these  concep- 
tions he  wrought  his  theological  scheme. 

But  he  did  better  than  most  of  his  followers, 
because  he  was  a  Universalist.  He  taught 
that  some  time  everybody  was  going  to  be  de- 
livered as  a  result  of  the  salvation  which  had 
been  prepared  and  which  he  was  proclaiming 
to  the  world. 

Leaving  Paul  then  out  of   account,  let  us 


Some  Theological  Answers         35 

look  at  the  New  Testament,  and  see  what  it 
has  to  offer  by  way  of  explanation  for  these 
dark  facts  of  human  life. 

Two  or  three  hundred  years  perhaps  before 
Christ,  the  Hebrews  had  come  to  believe  that 
we  were  surrounded  on  every  hand  by  good 
and  evil  spirits  in  the  invisible,  as  so  many  of 
their  neighbours  had  previously  believed.  Thus 
in  the  time  of  Christ  the  air  above  and  around 
was  supposed  to  be  full  of  spirits,  good  and 
bad.  Here  was  the  seat  of  Satan's  kingdom. 
He  is  spoken  of  in  the  New  Testament  as 
"the  prince  of  the  powers  of  the  air";  and 
these  powers  of  the  air  were  the  invisible 
inhabitants  everywhere  thronging  throughout 
space. 

If  you  will  read  an  account  of  the  thought 
of  that  time,  you  will  have  all  this  worked  out 
for  you  in  detail.  It  was  even  said  to  be  im- 
possible for  a  man  to  throw  a  stone  without 
hitting  some  spirit,  the  air  was  so  full  of  them. 

And  what  were  they  doing?  They  were 
good  and  bad ;  and  they  were  contending 
together  for  the  prize  of  the  human  soul. 
And  man  was  to  try  the  spirits,  if  he  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  them,  to  find  out  which  were 
good  and  bad,  to  link  himself  with  one  and 
against  the  other ;  for  this  battle  of  good  and 


36  Life's  Dark  Problems 


evil  was  going  on  not  only  among  men,  but  in 
the  invisible  world  that  enfolded  them  as  well. 

So  that  here  we  find  ourselves  back  towards 
the  beginning  of  the  world,  so  far  as  an  explana- 
tion of  these  dark  problems  is  concerned. 
~  J  wish  you  to  note  in  detail  as  to  what  some 
of  these  beliefs  were.  It  was  supposed  that 
these  evil  spirits  could  bring  to  pass  all 
sorts  of  evil  results, — a  pestilence,  a  famine, 
disease,  death.  The  New  Testament  is  full  of 
the  idea  that  certain  kinds  of  diseases  especially 
were  produced  by  evil  spirits. 

Nearly  all  persons  who  were  suffering  from 
nervous  disorders  and  insanity  were  supposed 
to  be  possessed  of  devils, — that  was  the  ex- 
planation of  it ;  and  we  find  Jesus  himself  ap- 
parently accepting  that  idea.  He  talks  about 
casting  out  devils,  tells  the  disciples  why  they 
could  not  on  certain  occasions  cast  them  out, 
and  seems  to  share  the  popular  belief  of  the 
time. 

But  not  only  that.  Here  is  a  man  who  has 
been  born  blind ;  and  the  disciples  ask  Jesus, 
Who  is  it  that  has  sinned,  the  man  himself — in 
a  previous  state  of  existence  of  course — or  his 
father  or  mother  ?  Somebody  has  sinned,  or 
~:felse  it  was  the  work  of  an  evil  spirit. 

You  remember  the  case  of  the  woman  who 


Some  Theological  Answers         37 

came  to  be  healed.  It  is  said  she  had  been 
afflicted  for  eighteen  years  ;  she  had  been  bent 
double.  Jesus  healed  her  on  the  Sabbath  Day  ; 
and  he  is  criticised  for  doing  it.  He  said  : 
You  loose  one  of  your  animals  on  the  Sabbath, 
you  help  a  sheep  out  of  a  pit.  Shall  I  not 
then  release  this  woman,  who  has  been  bound 
by  Satan  for  eighteen  years? 

He  accepts  the  idea  that  this  was  the  cause 
of  the  woman's  trouble,  that  it  was  Satanic  in 
its  origin. 

You  remember  the  tower  that  fell  and  killed 
a  lot  of  people.  It  never  seemed  to  occur 
to  any  one  that  it  had  not  been  built  properly, 
or  that  the  foundation  had  given  way,  or  that 
there  was  any  natural  cause  for  its  fall ;  but  it 
was  a  judgment  of  God,  and  it  was  discussed 
from  that  point  of  view.  Then  there  was  the 
deaf-and-dumb  man.  He  had  a  deaf-and-dumb 
spirit. 

So  we  find  that  the  New  Testament  teaches 
that  nearly  all  evils  are  caused  by  evil  spirits, 
or  that  they  are  judgments  of  God  for  sin,  or — 
and  now  one  other  reason.  The  reason  is  im- 
plied in  a  good  many  other  passages  ;  but  it  is 
taught  deliberately  in  the  twelfth  chapter  of 
the  Book  of  Hebrews. 

God  chastens  His  children  ;  God  punishes 


38  Life's  Dark  Problems 

them  if  they  are  really  His  children,  as  earthly 
parents  are  supposed  to  punish  their  children 
for  their  own  good. 

I  cannot  help  wondering,  let  me  say  here  in 
parenthesis,  as  to  how  much  of  the  hardening 
of  fathers'  and  mothers'  hearts,  and  of  cruelty 
towards  children,  may  have  originated  in  this 
kind  of  New  Testament  teaching. 

The  point  is  here.  It  says  distinctly :  If 
you  are  really  one  of  God's  children,  one  of 
His  sons,  then  you  must  expect  to  be  whipped. 
Earthly  parents  have  whipped  their  children 
for  their  good.  God  whips  His  children  for 
their  good  ;  and  here  is  an  explanation  for 
a  great  deal  of  the  suffering  that  good  people 
have  to  endure. 

Can  we  accept  that  ?  I  can  not.  As  I  look 
over  the  world,  what  do  I  see  ?  I  see  that  not 
only  good  people  are  whipped,  but  bad  people 
are  not.  Some  good  people  are  not  whipped, 
and  some  bad  are.  There  does  not  seem  to 
be  anything  rational,  consistent,  or  orderly  in 
the  procedure.  If  people  are  whipped  when 
they  are  good,  it  is  for  the  sake  of  training 
them  and  making  them  better  or  it  is  because 
temporarily  they  have  done  something  wrong 
and  need  to  be  corrected. 

Now  what  do  we  find  in  the  world  ?     We 


Some  Theological  Answers         39 

find  some  of  the  sweetest,  truest,  noblest  souls 
that  ever  lived,  who  have  never  thought  an 
evil  thought  or  done  an  evil  deed,  who  have 
suffered  year-long  torture.  I  cannot  reconcile 
a  fact  like  that  with  God's  chastising  people 
for  their  own  good. 

And  in  another  direction  you  find  that  peo- 
ple are  chastened  who  are  not  benefited  by  it. 
If  God  really  whips  people  to  make  them  bet- 
ter, they  ought  to  be  made  better.  He  is 
strong  enough  to  do  as  He  wills ;  nobody  is 
able  to  defeat  His  purpose  ;  but  we  find  that 
people  who  are  fairly  good,  to  start  with,  are 
made  bitter  and  hard  by  this  chastisement.  It 
does  not  work  out  for  them  the  peaceable 
fruits  of  righteousness  in  a  large  number  of 
cases. 

I  cannot  believe  for  one  moment  that  God 
goes  through  this  world  and  picks  out  a  person 
here,  and  says  he  is  to  suffer  such  and  such 
punishment,  and  here  is  another,  who  is  to 
suffer  something  else,  and  here  another,  and 
he  shall  suffer  something  else  ;  and  here  is  an- 
other, for  no  reason  that  we  can  see,  who  is  not 
to  suffer  at  all.  It  simply  makes  confusion. 
It  interferes  with  any  clear  or  rational  or  moral 
account  of  things  to  believe  that  such  is  God's 
method  of  doing  things. 


40  Life's  Dark  Problems 

I  find  a  great  deal  in  the  New  Testament 
that  is  inspiring  and  helpful  and  comforting 
and  divine, — but  I  cannot  find  there  any  ex- 
planation for  the  evils  and  sufferings  and  sor- 
rows of  the  world. 

Let  us  come  up  the  years  since  the  New 
Testament  time,  and  see  what  we  discover. 
During  the  last  nineteen  hundred  years  almost 
precisely  these  same  ideas  have  prevailed  uni- 
versally throughout  Christendom.  In  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  you  will  find  that  pestilence  and  famine 
and  disease  and  suffering  and  death  are  ex- 
plained either  as  the  work  of  devils  or  as  a 
judgment  of  God,  or  the  chastisement  of  God 
inflicted  arbitrarily  on  His  children;  and, instead 
of  studying  a  pestilence  or  a  disease  to  find  out 
any  natural  cause  for  it,  they  attack  it — how  ? 
With  prayers,  with  the  relics  of  saints,  with 
charms,  with  processions,  with  what  is  pure 
and  simple  magic ;  and  that  has  been  prac- 
tically universal  for  the  last  nineteen  hundred 
years. 

Consider  our  forefathers  in  this  country, 
here  in  New  York,  and  in  New  England,  in 
all  the  Colonies  that  made  up  the  country  be- 
fore the  Revolution.  The  same  ideas  pre- 
vailed :  many  of  these  evils  were  the  work  of 
evil  spirits.  In  Massachusetts  what  a  visita- 


Some  Theological  Answers         41 

tion  they  had  of  witchcraft,  evil  spirits  at  work 
in  human  life,  judgments  of  God  in  every  di- 
rection, or  else  God  in  some  mysterious  way 
choosing  to  punish  His  children  for  something 
they  did  not  understand  ! 

Our  Puritan  and  New  York  forefathers ! 
Have  we  outlived  it  yet?  Let  me  give  you 
one  or  two  memories  as  illustrative.  Some 
years  ago,  when  I  was  in  an  orthodox  church, 
I  helped  carry  on  a  series  of  meetings  with  a 
famous  revivalist.  Over  and  over  again  he 
talked  to  the  people  in  his  sermons  about 
God's  placing  a  coffin  across  their  path  to 
make  them  repent. 

What  does  that  mean  ?  It  means  that  God 
deliberately  and  purposely  kills  one  of  your 
family  or  friends,  one  of  your  children,  to  make 
you  come  forward  in  a  revival  meeting.  Can 
you  have  any  respect — to  say  nothing  of  a 
feeling  of  worship — for  that  kind  of  God  ? 

I  remember  a  personal  friend  in  Boston, 
a  teacher  in  one  of  the  public  schools,  and 
naturally  more  than  average  in  her  intelli- 
gence ;  and  yet  she  told  me,  after  her  sister 
died,  that  she  was  afraid  that  God  had  taken 
her  sister  away.  Why  ?  Because  she  had 
not  attended  regularly  enough  the  church  ser- 
vices during  Lent ! 


42  Life's  Dark  Problems 

God  in  heaven  killing  people  because  their 
friends  do  not  go  to  church  in  Lent  !  Think 
of  it !  Think  of  the  barbarism  !  What  a  thin 
veneer  of  civilisation  it  is  that  the  world  has 
yet  put  on ! 

When  I  was  in  a  church  in  the  West,  there 
was  a  fire  in  a  neighbouring  city.  The  min- 
isters all  went  to  preaching  about  it  as  a 
judgment  of  God.  I  noticed,  however,  in  the 
accounts  in  the  newspaper  one  curious  fact : 
the  last  thing  that  the  fire  burned  was  a  good, 
sound  orthodox  church,  and  right  next  to  it, 
left  standing  unharmed,  was  a  saloon. 

It  seemed  to  be  a  curious  kind  of  divine 
judgment  that  burned  a  church  and  spared  the 
saloon.  And,  if  you  will  study  these  cases  of 
divine  judgment,  you  will  find  large  numbers 
of  them  defective  in  this  way.  They  are 
neither  reasonable  nor  moral ;  and  they  do 
not  explain  anything. 

What  point,  then,  have  we  reached  so  far  in 
our  investigation  ?  We  have  discovered — ac- 
cording to  my  judgment,  at  any  rate — that 
none  of  these  attempts  to  explain  is  an  ade- 
quate, rational,  or  moral  explanation.  Evil 
exists,  suffering,  pain,  heartache — why  ?  The 
attempts  to  tell  us  why  so  far  seem  to  me  en- 
t^irely  to  fall  short.  Religion  so  far  has  not 


Some  Theological  Answers         43 

given  us  a  satisfactory  explanation.  It  has 
told  us  about  the  divine  power  and  the  divine 
life,  and  it  overwhelms  us  with  the  fact  of  the 
divine  mystery ;  but  it  does  not  explain. 

It  has  done  one  grand,  sweet  thing.  It  has 
told  us  to  believe  that  we  have  a  Father ;  it 
has  told  us  to  trust  in  this  Father ;  it  has  told 
us  to  be  patient  under  our  burdens  ;  it  has 
told  us  to  take  care  that  the  evils  of  life  do 
not  crush  our  spirits ;  it  has  told  us  to  meet 
them  bravely  and  simply  and  faithfully  ;  it  has 
told  us  to  see  to  it  that,  whatever  the  con- 
ditions of  our  lives  are,  we  shall  work  out  some 
grand,  fine,  sweet  result,  that  we  shall  not  let 
these  things  overwhelm  us ;  and  that  is  much. 

But  I  believe  that  we  shall  be  able  at  last  to 
find  some  satisfactory  clews  to  at  least  some  of 
these  mysteries.  We  have  not  reached  them 
yet ;  so  we  must  still  go  on  in  our  search. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE   DIVINE   GOVERNMENT 

GOD  has  made  to  us  no  supernatural  reve- 
lation as  to  His  method  of  governing  the 
world.  He  has  left  us,  as  indeed  He  has  in 
every  other  direction,  to  find  out  for  ourselves. 
We  discover  it  by  study  and  by  experience,  and 
it  is  better  that  it  is  so ;  for  by  the  processes 
of  study  and  experience  we  not  only  discover 
truth,  but  we  grow,  we  develop,  so  that  we  can 
understand,  comprehend,  and  feel  that  which 
we  have  attained. 

Such  being  the  case,  it  is  perfectly  natural 
that  men  in  different  stages  of  human  develop- 
ment should  have  transferred  to  the  heavens 
their  best  ideals  of  earthly  conditions.  What 
else  could  they  do  ?  We  are  men  :  we  have 
to  think  as  men,  imagine  as  men.  We  have 
to  think  from  our  human  point  of  view ;  and 
it  may  be  accurate  as  far  as  it  goes.  The  only 
difficulty  is  that  the  world  has  in  so  many 
cases  imagined  that  the  crude  and  ignorant 
conceptions  of  the  early  world  were  definitely 

44 


The  Divine  Government  45 

inspired,  and  so  infallible  and  not  to  be  im- 
proved upon.  So  these  old  ideas  persist  even 
after  we  are  wise  enough  to  have  learned 
something  better. 

It  was  natural,  then,  that  the  first  men,  the 
early  men  of  the  world,  should  have  thought 
of  the  world  as  governed  as  their  particular 
tribe  or  kingdom  was  governed.  So  they  im- 
agined a  king  seated  on  a  throne,  and  arbitra- 
rily directing  the  affairs  of  the  world.  An 
emperor,  if  he  be  an  absolute  monarch,  issues 
a  command,  an  edict,  an  ukase.  He  orders 
that  certain  things  be  done,  that  certain  other 
things  be  not  done  ;  and  he  attaches  to  these 
orders  an  entirely  arbitrary  sequence  in  the 
way  of  reward  or  punishment.  It  is  "  You  do 
thus,  and  I  will  do  so." 

There  is  no  natural,  no  necessary  causal  link 
between  the  thing  done  and  the  reward  or  the 
punishment.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  purely  arbi- 
trary ;  and  we  know  in  a  good  many  kingdoms 
in  this  world  subjects  have  been  rewarded,  set 
on  high,  enriched,  ennobled,  for  doing  wrong, 
for  ministering,  for  example,  to  the  king's 
vices.  And  other  men,  who  were  noble  and 
true,  have  been  punished,  even  to  being  put 
to  death,  for  doing  right.  And  it  has  not 
been  uncommon  indeed,  but  has  been  almost 


46  Life's  Dark  Problems 

universal  in  the  kingdoms  of  this  world,  that  a 
subject's  offences  against  the  king's  dignity  or 
person  have  been  regarded  as  of  a  great  deal 
more  importance  than  right  action  towards  the 
neighbour  or  the  fellow-man. 

It  is  a  greater  crime  to-day  in  Germany  to 
insult  the  Kaiser  than  it  is  to  steal  or  to  lie  or 
to  cheat  in  business ;  and  a  man  is  a  good 
deal  more  certain  of  being  severely  punished 
for  it. 

This  hints  at  what  is  true  in  a  hundred  dif- 
ferent directions ;  and  that  which  has  been 
true  in  regard  to  these  earthly  governments 
has  been  supposed  to  be  true  in  regard  to  the 
heavenly.  In  almost  all  of  the  religions  of  the 
world  it  has  been  a  greater  offence  to  speak 
slightingly  of  the  Deity,  to  disregard  some 
one  of  His  ordinances,  to  do  despite  to  some 
form  of  public  worship,  to  commit  sacrilege, 
as  we  say,  or  blasphemy,  than  it  has  been 
to  be  dishonest,  to  injure  ever  so  seriously 
one's  fellow-man. 

The  point  is  that  these  results  of  reward  or 
punishment  have  not  only  been  arbitrary,  but 
a  great  many  times  they  have  not  been  con- 
ditioned on  moral  action,  on  what  we  are 
accustomed  to  think  of  as  right  or  wrong. 

This  has  been  true  of  earthly  governments : 


The  Divine  Government  47 

it  has  been  supposed  to  be  true  of  heavenly 
governments.  The  whole  thing,  then,  has 
been  arbitrary.  People  have  been  supposed 
to  be  poor  or  to  be  sick  or  to  be  disgraced  in 
some  way,  to  lose  their  friends,  to  die  them- 
selves, not  necessarily  because  they  were  bad 
in  any  human  sense  of  the  word,  but  because 
of  some  offence  against  an  arbitrary  enactment. 

What  do  we  know  to-day  ?  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion among  intelligent  people.  We  know  that 
the  world  is  not  governed  after  any  such  fash- 
ion. We  live  in  a  universe  where  there  is 
a  demonstrated  universal  and  eternal  order. 
Everything  is  under  laws  of  cause  and  effect. 

There  are  no  rewards  in  this  world,  so  far 
as  God's  actions  towards  the  world  is  con- 
cerned ;  there  are  no  punishments, — of  course 
I  am  using  these  words  in  their  ordinary  mean- 
ing,— there  are  only  results.  Everything  that 
happens  is  preceded  by  some  other  thing  that 
stands  in  what  we  call  a  causal  relation  to  it. 
This  thing  being  what  it  is,  this  other  thing 
necessarily  follows  under  ordinary  conditions ; 
and  that  is  everywhere  the  case.  It  is  worth 
while  to  note  the  scientific  meaning  of  the 
word  "law."  I  hear  people,  those  who  are 
well  educated  in  modern  thought,  who  have 
not  outgrown  a  careless  use  of  language,  speak 


48  Life's  Dark  Problems 

of  law  as  though  it  were  a  cause,  as  though  it 
did  things,  as  though  it  governed  or  controlled 
affairs.  Law,  as  the  scientists  use  the  word,  is 
not  a  ceremony  like  that  of  the  Mosaic  legis- 
lation. It  is  not  an  edict  issued  by  a  king,  a 
parliament,  or  a  congress.  It  is  simply  the 
name  for  a  process.  It  is  only  a  name,  a  name 
for  an  observed  order.  As  an  illustration,  we 
say  that  it  is  the  law,  a  law  of  nature,  that 
water  will  freeze  at  a  temperature  of  thirty- 
two  degrees  F.;  and  it  always  will,  normal 
conditions  prevailing.  That  is  a  law  of  nature, 
a  law  of  God  expressed  in  and  manifested 
through  nature. 

It  is  a  law  in  chemistry  that  in  the  case  of 
certain  elements  a  certain  number  will  always 
combine  in  precisely  the  same  way  to  produce 
a  certain  definite  and  fixed  result.  It  never 
varies.  It  will  do  it  the  first  time  you  try  it 
and  do  it  the  millionth  time  you  try  it. 
These  forces  will  always  act  in  precisely  the 
same  way  under  precisely  similar  conditions. 

So  everywhere  in  the  universe  is  observable 
this  fixed,  this  changeless  order,  no  matter 
whether  we  like  it  or  dislike  it,  no  matter 
whether  we  think  it  is  the  best  way  to  govern 
the  universe  or  not.  This  is  what  the  world 
has  discovered  to  be  true. 


The  Divine  Government  49 

We  have  been  accustomed  in  the  past,  as  an 
illustration  of  what  I  mean,  to  pray  for  rain. 
The  Old  Testament  tells  us  that  the  prophet 
on  a  certain  occasion,  endowed  by  authority 
of  God  to  do  so,  shut  up  the  heavens,  so  that 
there  was  not  a  particle  of  rain  for  three  years 
and  six  months  ;  and  then  again,  when  he  asked 
God  to  send  the  rain,  it  came  once  more. 

Can  we  think  of  anything  like  that  as  possi- 
ble to-day  ?  I  know  people  are  not  through  yet 
with  praying  for  rain,  supposing  that  they  can 
change  the  atmospheric  conditions.  If  you  for 
a  moment  look  into  the  skies  over  your  head 
this  morning,  the  conditions  that  exist  are  con- 
nected by  an  unbroken  series  with  the  condi- 
tions of  yesterday  and  the  day  before,  and  so 
back  for  millions  of  years  ;  and  there  never 
anywhere  along  the  whole  line  has  been  the 
slightest  arbitrary  interference  with  those  con- 
ditions. 

To  change  those  conditions  this  morning, 
to  blot  out  one  tiny  drop  of  moisture,  would 
be  as  great  a  miracle  as  though  by  prayer  or 
force  of  will  you  could  hurl  the  Catskills  into 
New  York  harbor.  One  would  be  just  as 
much  a  miracle  as  the  other. 

We  are  in  a  universe,  then,  where  the  uni- 
versal laws  of  cause  and  effect  prevail. 

4 


50  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Is  this  a  bad  thing?  I  think  it  the  most 
blessed  thing  conceivable.  Let  me  suggest  to 
you  one  or  two  considerations  concerning  it. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  necessary  inference 
from  the  fact  that  God  is  perfectly  wise.  Con- 
sider,— of  course,  I  use  this  only  to  illustrate, — 
if  we  could  imagine  God  as  doing  something 
the  first  time,  He  does  it  of  course  in  the  best 
conceivable  way,  the  perfect  way.  Suppose 
He  has  occasion  to  do  it  again.  Conditions 
being  the  same,  will  He  not  do  it  again  in  the 
best  conceivable  way, — that  is,  in  the  same 
way  ?  If  He  has  to  do  it  the  third  time,  will  He 
not  do  it  in  the  same  way  ?  If  He  has  to  do  it 
millions  and  millions  of  times,  will  He  not  al- 
ways do  it  in  the  best  way, — that  is,  the  same 
way,  conditions  being  the  same  ? 

Do  you  not  see,  then,  that  the  statement  of 
one  of  the  New  Testament  writers  that  speaks 
of  Him  as  "  without  variableness  or  shadow  of 
turning  "  is  the  necessary  corollary  of  His  being 
a  perfectly  wise  Being, — that  is,  of  His  being 
God? 

Another  consideration.  If  it  were  not  for 
this  perfect  and  invariable  order,  do  you  not  see 
that  we  could  never  know  anything  ?  Study, 
human  knowledge,  science,  would  be  impossible. 

Water  freezes  at  thirty-two  degrees  F.  under 


The  Divine  Government  51 

ordinary  conditions.  Suppose  I  learn  that  fact 
to-day.  To-morrow  I  try  it,  and  find  out  that 
it  freezes  at  thirty-four  or  twenty-five.  Could 
I  ever  know  anything  about  the  qualities  of 
water  or  what  it  would  do  under  different  con- 
ditions ?  If  it  is  one  thing  at  one  time  and 
something  else  at  another  time,  knowledge  is 
impossible ;  and  what  is  true  in  regard  to  that 
is  true  everywhere. 

In  order  that  I  may  study,  in  order  that  I 
may  lay  out  an  intelligent  plan  for  my  human 
life  and  follow  it  year  after  year,  I  must  be  able 
to  count  on  things.  I  must  be  able  to  know 
that  there  is  a  perfect  order,  and  that  God  and 
His  methods  and  His  works  are  "the  same 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever." 

Not  only  that,  there  is  still  another  consid- 
eration. In  a  world  where  this  was  not  true, 
anything  like  moral  growth  and  development 
would  be  impossible.  I  must  be  able  to  know 
what  will  result  from  a  certain  thought,  a  cer- 
tain course  of  conduct,  certain  words  that  I 
utter.  I  must  know  that  this  is  an  orderly 
world,  so  that  I  can  deal  with  it  intelligently, 
so  that  I  can  rely  upon  results  before  I  am  able 
to  develop  anything  like  a  consistent  character 
that  stands  in  any  intelligent  relation  to  an 
orderly  world. 


52  Life's  Dark  Problems 

People  do  not  believe  this  yet.  Intelligent 
people,  if  they  know  it,  forget  it.  People  who 
are  perfectly  familiar  with  the  results  of  mod- 
ern science  seem  at  times  to  entirely  overlook 
it.  My  mail  is  flooded  with  letters  from  people 
who  do  not  know  it  or  who  forget  it. 

Almost  every  day  on  the  street  I  converse 
with  somebody  who  either  does  not  know  it 
or  who  forgets  it.  For  example,  a  man  says 
to  me :  "  I  have  tried  to  be  good.  Why 
must  I  suffer  from  being  ill?" — "  I  have  tried 
to  be  good.  Why  has  God  taken  my  child, 
my  wife,  away  from  me  ?  " — "  I  have  tried 
to  be  good.  Why  have  I  lost  my  money, 
or  why  have  I  not  been  able  to  make  more 
money  than  I  have  ?  " — "  Here  is  a  person  who 
is  not  good  at  all,  and  he  is  prosperous  and 
apparently  happy.  I  have  tried  to  be  good, 
and  I  am  not  prosperous." 

What  do  questions  like  these  mean?  They 
mean  that  the  person  that  asks  them  either 
does,  not  believe  in  a  definite  order  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  world  or  else,  for  the  time 
being,  he  has  overlooked  these  facts. 

Let  us  now  take  up,  by  way  of  illustration, 
to  make  the  matter  perfectly  clear,  and  con- 
sider several  departments  of  human  activity. 
Here  is  a  farmer,  for  example.  It  used  to  be 


The  Divine  Government  53 

the  custom  to  pray  for  a  good  crop,  to  pray  for 
rain  when  there  was  a  drought.  It  used  to  be 
the  custom,  when  the  corn  was  planted,  to  or- 
ganise a  religious  service  or  procession.  There 
were  all  sorts  of  ceremonials  gone  through 
that  were  supposed  to  produce  certain  results 
on  the  crop.  Now,  is  it  not  perfectly  clear, 
as  we  think  of  it  to-day,  that  this  is  not  the 
divine  way  ? 

The  universe,  as  we  know  it,  as  the  result  of 
modern  science,  is  a  different  universe.  It  is 
a  moral  universe  ;  it  is  an  orderly  universe,  a 
true  one  that  you  can  count  on  and  deal  with. 
You  can  produce  results ;  but  you  must  pro- 
duce them  in  a  natural  way — that  is,  in  a  defi- 
nite way,  in  accordance  with  the  definitely 
established  conditions  to  be  found  there. 

If  a  farmer  finds  a  good  piece  of  soil, — he 
knows  a  good  piece  of  soil  when  he  sees  it, 
and  finds  it, — if  he  prepares  it  properly,  if  he 
plants  good  seed,  if  the  sun  shines  and  the  rain 
falls,  if  he  hoes  it,  cultivates  it,  of  course  he  will 
have  a  good  crop  ;  and  whether,  morally  or 
religiously  speaking,  he  is  a  good  man  or  a  bad 
man  will  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
ripening  of  his  harvest.  Will  it  ?  Can  it  ? 

As  a  farmer  dealing  with  soils  and  seeds  and 
crops,  he  is  obeying  God,  so  far  as  the  farming 


54  Life's  Dark  Problems 

is  concerned;  and  the  results  are  natural, 
they  are  inevitable.  It  is  God's  eternal  work- 
ing that  produces  these  results.  Whether  he 
swears,  whether  he  drinks  too  much,  whether 
he  is  kind  to  his  wife  and  children,  whether 
he  is  a  good  neighbour  or  not, — those  things 
have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  fact 
that,  as  a  farmer,  he  has  found  out  God's  way 
and  obeyed  Him  ;  and  the  result  of  necessity 
follows. 

It  is  impertinent  to  introduce  any  other  con- 
ditions. It  is  not  piety  to  suppose  that  God 
will  change  His  universal  and  eternal  laws  as  to 
the  farm  because  some  one  prays. 

Prayer  is  good  in  its  place ;  but  it  has 
nothing  necessarily  to  do  with  farming.  It 
concerns  another  department  of  human  life. 

Let  us  consider  it  in  another  department. 
It  used  to  be  said  that  the  Cunard  steamships 
were  so  universally  safe  to  travel  in  because 
every  time  a  steamer  sailed  from  port  prayers 
were  offered  for  its  safety. 

Here  again,  if  that  were  true,  if  prayers 
could  take  a  steamship  safely  across  the  At- 
lantic from  port  to  port,  then  why  not  let 
praying  do  the  whole  business  ?  Why  not 
send  any  sort  of  an  old  ship  to  sea  with  any 
sort  of  men  aboard,  whether  they  know  any- 


The  Divine  Government  55 

thing  about  navigation  or  not  ?  If  prayer  be 
a  substitute  for  shipbuilding  and  knowledge 
of  navigation  and  a  compliance  with  its  laws, 
why  then  you  may  leave  one  side  the  whole 
business  of  navigation,  and  let  prayer  do  the 
whole. 

But  here  again,  if  the  man  who  stands  at 
the  wheel  keeps  the  ship  pointed  in  the  right 
direction,  if  the  ship  has  been  properly  con- 
structed to  do  his  will, — that  is,  if  the  laws  of 
God  touching  navigation  have  been  understood 
and  obeyed, — then  the  ship  passes  safely  over 
the  sea ;  and  it  is  of  no  consequence,  so  far  as 
navigation  is  concerned,  as  to  what  is  the  moral 
character  of  the  captain  or  the  sailors  or  what 
their  personal  habits  may  be. 

It  is  of  a  great  deal  of  importance,  looked  at 
from  some  other  point  of  view ;  but  if  I  were 
going  to  sail  from  New  York  to  Liverpool,  I 
should  prefer  the  finest  steamer  I  could  dis- 
cover, the  most  experienced  captain,  and  I 
would  rather  have  them,  and  have  them  en- 
tirely neglectful  of  religion,  entirely  oblivious 
to  morals,  have  them  engage  in  profanity  if 
they  pleased  all  the  way  over,  than  to  have 
another  set  of  men  who  knew  nothing  about 
navigation,  in  a  miserable  ship,  though  they 
conducted  a  prayer-meeting  from  port  to  port. 


56  Life's  Dark  Problems 

In  other  words,  it  is  not  obedience  to  the 
will  of  God  to  neglect  His  laws  at  sea  when 
you  wish  to  make  a  voyage,  and  attempt  to 
substitute  for  that  the  keeping  of  some  other 
law  that  has  no  reference  whatever  to  naviga- 
tion. Piety  towards  God,  in  sailing  the  sea,  is 
discovering  and  obeying  the  laws  of  the  sea, 
which  are  God's  laws. 

A  hint,  an  illustration,  in  one  other  depart- 
ment of  life,  because  it  is  spoken  of  so  very  com- 
monly,— the  conduct  of  business.  Ever  since 
I  can  remember  I  have  had  people  talking  to 
me  as  though  they  expected  God  to  reward 
them  in  cash  payments  for  being  good  ;  that 
is,  if  they  were  loving,  true,  kind,  moral,  and 
religious,  that  they  ought  to  get  along  in  a 
/  business  way,  and  they  wonder  at  the  govern- 
ment of  a  world  that  lets  bad  people  get  rich 
and  good  people  stay  poor. 

Can  you  not  see  that  here,  again,  there  is 
no  sort  of  causal  connection  between  the  two 
whatsoever  ?  Here  are  men  who  have  a  busi- 
ness genius,  as  truly  as  other  men  have  an 
artistic  genius  or  a  scientific  genius  or  a  musi- 
cal genius.  They  can  make  money  anywhere, 
I  have  known  cases  of  a  man  in  a  certain  situa- 
tion failing,  another  man's  taking  up  the  same 
business  precisely  on  the  same  spot  and  mak- 


The  Divine  Government  57 

ing  himself  rich.  The  difference  was  not  in 
the  difference  of  the  conditions,  but  simply  in 
the  difference  of  the  men.  One  had  the  natural 
ability,  and  the  other  did  not ;  and  this  finan- 
cial ability,  again,  is  not  necessarily  connected 
with  either  religion  or  morals  in  any  causal 
way. 

A  man  is  not  necessarily  bad  because  he  is 
rich.  He  is  not  necessarily  good  because  he 
is  poor.  God  does  not  punish  people  by  tak- 
ing money  away  from  them  arbitrarily.  He 
does  not  reward  them  by  giving  them  money 
arbitrarily.  The  accumulation  of  money  is  a 
perfectly  natural  process,  under  natural  con- 
ditions ;  and  the  people  who  have  the  oppor- 
tunity and  who  know  how  to  do  it  are  the 
ones  who  make  money  and  keep  it,  and  so 
are  recognised  in  the  world  to-day  in  a  com- 
mercial way. 

But  remember  that,  while  I  have  given  illus- 
trations in  three  departments  of  human  life, 
the  same  principles  and  laws  hold  true  in  every 
department  of  life. 

I  have  known  mothers  who  mourned  be- 
cause God,  as  they  say,  makes  a  child  ill  or 
takes  it  away.  Some  of  us  who  stand  beside 
and  observe  them  believe  that  we  can  find  the 
causes  at  work  without  laying  the  responsibility 


58  Life's  Dark  Problems 

on  God  at  all.  We  may  not  have  to  go  any 
farther  than  the  carelessness  or  the  ignorance 
or  the  pride  of  the  mother. 

Causes  produce  results  here  just  as  well  as 
anywhere  else.  If  the  best  man  in  the  world 
be  exposed  to  yellow  fever,  and  his  system  be 
in  the  condition  to  feel  the  touch  of  the  in- 
fection, and  he  has  yellow  fever  and  dies,  his 
being  good  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

If  a  good  man  take  arsenic  by  mistake, 
God  does  not  suspend  the  laws  of  the  universe 
because  of  his  lamentable  blunder ;  and  it  is 
well  for  us  that  He  does  not. 

This  universal  order  is  infinitely  more  im- 

^portant  to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  the 
world  than  is  the  continued  life  of  any  one 
man,  no  matter  who  or  how  good  he  may  be. 

If  the  best  man  in  the  universe  walk  over 
the  edge  of  a  precipice  in  the  dark,  the  force 
of  gravity  will  not  be  suspended  for  his  per- 
sonal benefit.  v 

This  universe  moves  on.  The  only  safety 
for  us  is  to  learn  the  laws  of  its  movement, 
and  keep  out  of  its  way.  It  will  not  stop 
because  we  are  imprudent,  because  we  make 
a  mistake,  because  we  choose  impudently  to 
defy  it,  because  we  pray,  because  we  are  re- 
ligious, because  we  are  moral. 


The  Divine  Government  59 

As  Matthew  Arnold  has  written  it  in  Em- 

pedocles  on  Etna  : 

"  Streams  will  not  curb  their  pride 

The  just  man  not  to  entomb, 
Nor  lightnings  go  aside 
To  give  his  virtues  room." 

But  this  universe  in  its  regular  working 
does  not  produce  equal  results,  people  tell 
me.  The  inequality  of  human  conditions  is 
one  of  the  grave  charges  made  against  the 
government  of  the  world.  Let  us  consider  it 
for  a  moment  in  the  light  of  this  universal 
order  which  we  have  been  discussing. 

Nothing, — no  two  things  have  ever  been 
discovered  that  were  precisely  alike,  so  far  as 
the  work  of  nature  is  concerned.  There  are  not 
two  leaves  in  the  forest  alike,  no  two  trees 
alike,  no  two  birds  alike,  no  two  animals  alike, 
no  two  men  or  women  alike. 

Indeed,  according  to  the  demonstrated  truth 
of  evolution,  the  progress  of  the  world  instead 
of  being  toward  uniformity  is  toward  more 
and  more  variety  everywhere. 

It  does  not  seem  to  have  been  God's  inten- 
tion to  make  things  or  people  equal.  The  rose 
is  not  the  equal  of  the  oak,  the  violet  is  not  the 
equal  of  the  pine  ;  and,  when  we  come  to  con- 
sider these  human  natures  of  ours,  one  man  is 


60  Life's  Dark  Problems 

fine-looking  and  another  is  not,  one  man  has 
remarkable  brain  power  and  the  other  is  com- 
monplace or  even  below  that.  One  man  has 
artistic  tastes,  love  for  the  beautiful ;  another 
has  not.  One  has  a  sense  of  humour,  and  an- 
other has  not.  One  is  touched  by  some  sub- 
lime spectacle,  and  the  other  is  not.  There  is 
every  conceivable  difference  ;  and  not  only  that, 
but  every  difference  you  can  imagine  in  regard 
to  qualities  of  character,  goodness  and  badness, 
in  regard  to  capacity  for  happiness,  in  regard 
to  what  are  supposed  to  be  the  ordinary  means 
and  conditions  for  enjoyment, — as  books,  pos- 
sessions, houses,  cattle,  horses,  property  of 
every  kind, — every  kind  of  variety  that  you  can 
possibly  imagine, — no  two  people  alike.  Why 
is  this  ?  How  is  it  ? 

In  certain  Oriental  religions  that  are  being 
more  or  less  adopted  here  in  the  West, — curi- 
ously enough  as  it  seems  to  me, — they  claim  to 
explain  this  as  a  result  of  reincarnation  brought 
out  under  the  law  of  Karma.  I  never  could 
see  any  help  in  this.  People  are  not  alike  now. 
Were  they  always  unlike  ?  Were  they  unlike 
in  the  beginning  ?  If  they  were,  then  He  who 
made  them  so  is  responsible.  Were  they  just 
alike  at  the  beginning  ?  If  they  were,  and  were 
circumstanced  and  conditioned  just  the  same, 


The  Divine  Government  61 

then  of  course  they  would  have  continued  just 
the  same. 

Why,  then,  do  they  happen  to  differ  ?  What 
began  the  difference  ?  If  they  had  been  just 
alike  at  the  first,  and  situated  in  just  the  same 
way,  they  would  have  kept  on  just  alike.  But 
they  are  not  alike. 

This  reincarnation  only  pushes  the  concep- 
tion of  the  difficulty  back  behind  the  curtain  of 
the  past,  where  for  a  little  while  it  is  out  of 
sight,  but  does  not  help  it ;  it  does  not  change 
it  at  all. 

Ultimately, — we  might  as  well  face  the  matter 
frankly, — ultimately,  the  Author  of  this  universe 
is  responsible  for  all  these  human  differences. 

There  is  another  thing  that  is  frequently 
spoken  of  in  connection  with  this  that  I  can 
only  refer  to  in  a  word,  although  it  is  very  im- 
portant. That  is  the  law  of  heredity. 

We  have  inherited  so  many  differences  and 
disabilities  ;  and  there  are  those  who  say  that 
this,  as  evolution  teaches  it  to-day,  is  just  as 
bad  as  the  old  theological  foreordination. 
It  would  be  if  the  results  were  inexorable  and 
if  they  were  eternal ;  but  under  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect  the  results  are  not  inexorable 
and  the  results  are  not  eternal.  We  can  work 
ourselves  out  of  these  conditions  and  up  to  the 


62  Life's  Dark  Problems 

finest  that  we  can  comprehend.  Waiving,  then, 
this  aside  as  explaining  it,  do  we  need  an  ex- 
planation ?  Would  we  have  absolute  equality 
if  we  could  ? 

Suppose  Mount  Blanc  should  become  en- 
vious of  Mount  Everest,  that  one  of  the  Hima- 
layas that  they  tell  us  is  the  highest  in  the 
world.  What  claim  has  Mount  Blanc  to  be  as 
high  as  Mount  Everest  ?  Why  would  it  be 
any  better  off  or  happier  if  it  were  ? 

If  all  the  world,  all  the  parts  of  the  world, 
were  just  as  high  as  any  other  part,  there  would 
be  neither  mountains  nor  valleys,  but  an  un- 
bearable monotony ;  and  so  in  human  life. 
Why  should  I  be  envious  of  Shakespeare  ?  I 
confess  I  would  like  to  have  been  able  to  write 
Hamlet ;  but  what  claim  have  I  to  the  ability 
to  write  Hamlet  any  more  than  Shakespeare  ? 
I  do  not  think  either  of  us  had  any  claim  to  it ; 
but  when  the  ability  was  given  to  Shakespeare 
instead  of  to  me  I  was  not  wronged.  Some- 
body had  to  have  it.  If  anybody  was  going  to, 
why  not  Shakespeare  as  well  as  anybody  else  ? 
If  all  the  people  in  the  world  were  Shake- 
speares,  who  would  read  Shakespeare,  who 
would  act  Shakespeare,  who  would  enjoy 
reading  Shakespeare?  It  would  be  again  an 
unbearable  monotony. 


The  Divine  Government  63 

Why,  we  are  childlike  when  we  talk  about 
this  fact  of  inequality,  that  it  is  a  moral  diffi- 
culty that  needs  to  be  solved  at  all.  It  is  that 
alone  which  makes  the  world  a  possible  place 
to  live  in.  [its  infinite  variety  is  its  beauty,  its 
ineffable  charnO 

And  then,  to  touch  a  little  more  clearly  on  a 
point  suggested  in  passing,  pray  tell  me  what 
claim  you  have  on  the  universe,  or  what  claim 
I  have  on  the  universe,  for  any  definite  amount 
of  beauty,  of  power,  of  brilliancy  or  happiness, 
or  anything  else.  Before  I  existed  at  all,  I  had 
no  claim  on  existence,  of  course.  Some  Power 
brought  me  here,  and  gave  me  a  certain  amount 
of  power  and  intelligence  and  moral  character 
and  the  capacity  for  enjoyment.  What  was 
given  me  was  an  outright  bestowal,  and  I  have 
no  claim  on  one  single  particle  of  it ;  and  if 
this  same  Power  has  given  twice  as  much  to 
somebody  else,  that  person  has  no  merit  for 
possessing  it.  Neither  is  he  to  blame  for  pos- 
sessing it.  Neither  have  I  any  right  to  be  en- 
vious or  jealous  of  him  because  he  possesses  it. 
So  far  as  it  goes,  the  good  is  an  outright  gift 
of  the  universe. 

And  then  there  are  certain  things  that  make 
up  in  some  ways  to  those  people  who  seem 
to  lack.  May  I  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a 


64  Life's  Dark  Problems 

concrete  case?  If  the  person  that  I  have  in 
mind  reads  this,  she  need  not  be  troubled. 
She  need  not  be  afraid  that  somebody  else 
knows  the  one  to  whom  I  refer. 

I  know  a  woman  who  is  getting  along  in 
years.  She  is  very  near  what  young  people 
speak  of  as  old  age.  She  has  been  sick  and 
suffering  a  good  many  years  of  her  life.  She 
is  poor,  has  been  obliged  to  go  without  a 
thousand  things  that  she  would  like  to  have 
had,  and  that  most  people  somehow  think 
they  are  wronged  if  they  do  not  possess ;  but, 
for  the  life  of  me,  I  cannot  pity  her,  because  I 
know  her.  I  have  talked  with  her.  She  is 
one  of  the  sweetest,  truest,  noblest  women  I 
know  ;  and  she  told  me  in  a  conversation  not 
a  great  while  ago  that  the  joy  of  her  mother- 
hood, the  satisfaction,  the  delight  that  had 
come  to  her  through  being  a  mother,  through 
the  gift  of  her  children  and  her  love  for  them, 
was  something  that  the  universe  could  not 
buy. 

I  do  not  think  a  woman  like  that  is  poor. 
I  do  not  think  that  we  need  to  stop  and  waste 
any  great  amount  of  pity  on  her.  I  know  a 
great  many  rich  people,  in  beautiful  homes, 
who  would  gladly  exchange  places  if  they 
knew  her  inner  life. 


The  Divine  Government  65 

So  there  are  in  every  direction  combinations 
that  neither  you  nor  I  are  able  to  weigh  or 
measure.  There  are  people  on  whom  we  waste 
compassion,  who  do  not  need  it,  because  we 
choose  to  measure  them  by  our  present  stand- 
ards ;  and  there  are  people  whom  we  envy  who, 
if  we  knew  it,  are  to  be  profoundly  pitied.  So 
God  is  not  so  very  unequal  as  we  are  prone  to 
imagine  in  the  distribution  of  His  gifts. 

Do  these  considerations  explain  everything? 
No.  I  do  not  pretend  that  they  do.  I  do  be- 
lieve, however,  that  they  will  help  us,  if  we 
think  them  out  carefully,  to  understand  these 
problems  a  little  better,  to  have  a  more  intelli- 
gent conception  of  them,  and  give  us  some 
good  reason  for  supposing  that  even  those 
things  that  we  cannot  quite  adequately  ex- 
plain at  present  are  still  capable  of  explanation 
in  accordance  with  the  wisdom  and  the  good- 
ness of  our  Father  in  heaven. 

And  one  thing  that  helps  is  the  demon- 
strated science  of  evolution.  Here  is  an  indi- 
vidual soul.  He  is  going  through  a  process  of 
growth,  of  training,  of  development.  At  the 
present  time,  apparently,  there  is  a  period  of 
retrogression.  You  may  think  he  is  going 
backward.  Perhaps  he  is  just  now.  I  believe 
that  every  soul  in  this  universe  is  doomed  to 


66  Life's  Dark  Problems 

be  trained,  to  be  lifted,  to  be  taught  through 
sorrow,  through  anguish,  through  tears, 
through  no  matter  what  processes  or  experi- 
ence, until  it  comes  to  that  of  which  it  is  capa- 
ble. And,  when  we  look  over  the  universe  as 
a  whole,  we  simply  know — we  simply  know 
that  things  are  not  finished,  that  they  are  only 
in  process. 

Suppose  a  man  who  had  never  seen  a 
finished  ship  should  visit  a  ship-yard,  and  pro- 
nounce judgment  on  the  framework  of  a  ves- 
sel on  the  ways,  laugh  at  the  idea  of  that 
thing's  ever  going  to  sea  or  crossing  the  At- 
lantic. We  should  be  justified  in  suggesting 
to  him  that  perhaps  he  had  better  wait  until  it 
was  finished  before  he  pronounced  judgment. 

So  we  have  no  right  to  pronounce  judgment 
on  this  scheme  of  human  life  until  we  are  sure 
it  is  finished.  We  know  that  the  universe  all 
around  us  is  simply  in  process,  that  it  is  mov- 
ing towards  some  far-off, — shall  we  say  finished 
event  ? — some  far-off  event  anyway  ;  and  we 
trust  it  is  to  be  finished.  We  trust  also  that 
it  will  prove  divine.  But  this  we  know,  that 
it  is  only  in  process. 

You  can  go  into  an  orchard  in  June.  You 
bite  an  apple,  and  it  is  bitter.  You  say  it  is 
absurd  to  suppose  that  that  is  a  good  piece 


The  Divine  Government  67 

of  work.  Wait  until  September  or  October, 
then  judge  it.  So  I  believe  that  we  have  a 
right  to  trust  faithfully  the  wisdom  and  the 
love  of  God  in  the  working  of  this  perfectly 
orderly  universe  in  which  we  have  found  our- 
selves, and  that  we  have  no  right  to  pro- 
nounce judgment  here  until  we  are  sure  it  is 
complete.  Wait  then,  and  judge  when  you 
know. 


CHAPTER  IV 
PAIN 

THE  unknown  author  of  the  Book  of  Reve- 
lation has  written :  "  Neither  shall  pain 
be  any  more."  This  is  from  his  vision  of  the 
ideal  condition  of  things  of  which  humanity 
from  the  beginning  has  cherished  its  dream. 

We  are  to  consider  now  the  problem  of  pain 
as  related  to  our  faith  in  the  goodness  of  the  uni- 
versal order.  But  first  we  need  to  understand 
the  problem.  What  is  the  nature  of  pain  ? 
How  much  pain  is  there  in  the  world  ?  How 
much  of  it  is  unnecessary  ?  How  much  of  it 
is  chargeable  against  the  universe,  and  for  how 
much  are  we  ourselves  responsible  ? 

One  of  the  main  characteristics  of  this  mod- 
ern world  of  ours  is  the  development  of 
tenderness  and  sympathy,  of  the  desire  to 
help,  such  as  in  previous  ages  was  not  known  ; 
and  this  very  sensitiveness,  tenderness,  sym- 
pathy of  ours, — this  is  apt  to  exaggerate  the 
facts  of  suffering. 

Now,  while  I  do  not  wish  to  minimise  these 
03 


Pain  69 

facts,  it  does  seem  to  me  that  there  is  an  equal 
danger  in  exaggerating  them ;  because  the 
great  question  which  we  wish  to  try  to  settle, 
if  we  can,  is  as  to  whether  or  not  the  fact  of 
pain  makes  it  unreasonable  for  us  to  believe  in 
the  goodness  of  God. 

We  wish,  then,  to  bring  as  an  indictment 
against  that  goodness  only  the  necessary  facts. 
It  makes  the  problem  more  difficult  of  solution, 
if  we  suppose  that  the  quantity  of  pain  in  the 
world  is  very  much  more  than  it  actually  is. 
Let  us,  then,  at  the  outset  go  on  a  little  search 
to  see  if  we  may  discover  something  approxi- 
mating the  reality  in  this  direction. 

When  we  look  down  at  the  lower  forms  of 
life  beneath  us,  we  have  come  to  think,  under 
the  teachings  of  modern  science  and  the  growth 
of  this  sympathy  and  tenderness  to  which  I 
have  referred,  that  it  is  only  one  bloody  scene 
of  warfare,  suffering,  death. 

Tennyson,  without  meaning  to,  has  taught 
us  to  think  of 

"  Nature  red  in  tooth  and  claw 
With  ravin." 

He  has  told  us  how  this  nature  "shrieks" 
against  the  creed  of  belief  in  the  divine  good- 
ness. Let  us  try  to  see  what  are  the  facts.  Is 


70  Life's  Dark  Problems 

this  lower  life  of  the  world  a  scene  of  suffer- 
ing, or  is  it  predominantly  and  almost  ex- 
clusively a  scene  of  happiness,  at  least  of 
comparative  freedom  from  pain  ?  One  or  two 
illustrations.  These  must  stand  as  suggestions 
of  many  others. 

Every  one  who  has  made  a  study  in  this 
direction  knows  that  there  are  certain  very  low 
forms  of  life,  certain  kinds  of  worms,  that  may 
be  cut  in  two  without  hurting  them ;  that  is, 
instead  of  destroying  the  life  of  the  worm,  it 
simply  results  in  there  being  two  worms.  Each 
half  proceeds  to  develop  itself  until  it  goes  off 
and  leads  a  perfect  life  of  its  own.  Then 
there  are  certain  of  the  crustaceans  which  can 
lose  a  limb,  have  it  torn  off,  perhaps  in  conflict 
with  some  enemy,  without  any  apparent  dis- 
comfort. 

What  would  be  the  result  if  an  arm  or  a 
leg  were  violently  torn  from  a  human  body  ? 
Agony  unspeakable  not  only,  but  almost  in- 
evitable death.  In  the  case  of  these  creatures 
that  I  have  referred  to  there  is  apparently  no 
suffering.  At  any  rate,  they  proceed  to  grow 
another  limb,  and  go  about  their  occupations 
as  though  nothing  had  happened. 

Even  so  highly  developed  an  animal  as  the 
horse  does  not  suffer  anything  like  the  amount 


Pain  71 

of  pain  we  should  suffer  if  we  were  placed  in 
the  same  conditions.  One  fact  alone  seems  to 
me  to  demonstrate  this.  I  have  known  of  a 
horse,  having  broken  a  leg  just  above  the 
hoof  and  having  been  turned  into  a  pasture, 
to  go  walking  about  on  the  broken  end  of  his 
leg,  crowding  it  down  into  the  soil  and  push- 
ing the  flesh  away  from  the  bone,  and  nibbling 
the  grass  with  apparent  content. 

That  means,  of  course,  that  there  was  no 
suffering  comparable  for  an  instant  to  what 
would  have  been  the  case  if  it  had  been  a 
man. 

All  this  means  merely  this :  that,  in  order  that 
there  should  be  keen  feeling  of  any  sort,  there 
must  be  a  highly  organised  nervous  system, 
finely  developed  and  complex  in  its  develop- 
ment ;  and  the  possibility  of  feeling  either  pain 
or  pleasure  keeps  step  with  this  nervous 
development. 

On  the  part  of  these  lower  forms  of  life, 
then,  there  is  no  possibility  of  suffering  that 
at  all  approaches  that  which  we  should  endure 
in  similar  conditions.  Does  this  mean  that 
you  are  to  be  careless  of  the  treatment  of  the 
lower  animals  ?  I  point  it  out  for  a  precisely 
opposite  reason.  We  are  careless,  and  we  do 
inflict  a  large  amount  of  needless  suffering, 


72  Life's  Dark  Problems 

but  if  we  are  to  reform  the  world  in  this 
direction  we  must  deal  with  facts. 

We  must  not  press  our  sentimental  feelings 
so  far  as  to  produce  a  reaction  on  the  part  of 
hard-headed  and  common-sense  people.  If 
we  do,  the  result  will  be  that,  instead  of  join- 
ing with  us  to  help  put  an  end  to  this  needless 
suffering,  they  will  tell  us  we  are  creating 
facts  in  our  imagination  that  do  not  really  ex- 
ist, and  they  will  refuse  to  recognise  that 
which  really  does  exist,  and  so  refuse  to  help 
us  bring  the  cruelty  to  an  end.  We  need, 
then,  to  try  to  find  what  is  true. 

Now,  as  we  stand  beside  some  brook  on  a 
spring  morning  and  see  the  fish  gliding  through 
the  water,  we  know,  of  course,  that  they  eat 
each  other.  We  know  that  they  prey  upon 
each  other,  as  do  the  most  of  the  lower  forms 
of  life.  Shall  we  let  that  one  fact,  then,  obscure 
the  other  evident  fact,  that  their  life  is  one  of 
almost  continuous  fulness  of  happiness  and 
joy,  so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  feeling  happi- 
ness ?  There  is  no  such  possibility  of  suffer- 
ing here  as  there  would  be  in  our  case. 

I  remember  once,  when  I  was  a  boy,  catching 
a  fish  which  had  a  hook  in  its  jaw.  It  had  been 
there  nobody  knows  how  long — a  year,  two 
years  perhaps  ;  but  it  gave  it  no  apparent  incon- 


Pain  73 

venience,  and  did  not  at  all  interfere  with  its 
biting  at  the  next  hook  that  came  in  its  way. 
I  speak  of  this  simply  to  show  that  we  must 
not  exaggerate  the  possibility  of  suffering  on 
the  part  of  the  lower  forms  of  life.  Some  fair 
morning,  when  the  sun  has  risen  and  all  the 
woods  are  throbbing  and  thrilling  with  life, 
shall  we  obscure  this  scene  of  manifest  and 
evident  delight  by  remembering  merely  that 
birds  prey  upon  each  other,  that  sometimes 
the  eagle  destroys  the  sparrow,  that  there  are 
cases  of  one  kind  pursuing  another  and  feed- 
ing upon  it  ? 

These  are  facts.  The  whole  question  of 
death  I  waive  one  side,  because  that  will  have 
to  be  treated  by  itself.  They  must  all  die,  as 
we  must  all  die.  Granting  the  fact,  then,  that 
these  lower  forms  of  life  must  come  to  an  end, 
I  believe  that  there  is  no  sort  of  question  that 
they  suffer  less  by  the  present  method  of  pur- 
suit and  mutual  destruction  than  they  would 
by  being  left  to  grow  old  and  die,  probably 
of  starvation  because  they  were  incapable  of 
providing  for  their  wants.  I  believe  the  pres- 
ent method  is  the  kindly  method ;  and  this  is 
emphasised  by  a  further  consideration. 

So  far  as  we  have  been  able  to  discover,  it  is 
doubtless  true  that  the  victim  in  the  case  of 


74  Life's  Dark  Problems 

pursuit  and  destruction  fears  and  suffers  so 
long  as  fear  and  suffering  can  help  it  to  escape, 
but  that,  when  the  capture  is  effected,  both 
the  fear  and  suffering  end, — practically  end. 
If  it  is  true  of  higher  forms  of  life,  much  more 
is  it  likely  to  be  true  of  the  lower. 

Mr.  Livingstone,  the  great  explorer,  tells  us 
that  he  was  once  captured  by  a  lion ;  and  he 
said  that,  though  he  expected  instant  death, 
the  minute  the  lion's  paw  was  on  him  there 
was  no  more  fear,  no  more  suffering,  simply  a 
wondering  kind  of  curiosity  as  to  what  next, 
—a  nerve  paralysis  as  to  ordinary  pain.  Mr. 
Whymper,  the  great  Alpine  climber,  tells  us 
that  on  a  certain  occasion  he  slipped  in  the 
Alps,  and  fell  about  two  thousand  feet.  He 
struck,  fortunately,  in  soft  snow,  and  was  not 
seriously  injured ;  but  he  said  that  the  pros- 
pect of  death  (which,  of  course,  he  immediately 
expected)  had  about  it  no  terror,  that,  the 
moment  he  found  himself  going,  it  was  simply 
a  great  wonder  as  to  how  it  was  going  to  end. 

We  have  very  good  reason,  then,  to  suppose 
that  the  creatures  which  are  captured  as  prey 
and  devoured  by  other  creatures  suffer  so 
long  as  suffering  can  do  them  any  good  in 
helping  their  escape,  but  that  beyond  that  it 
practically  ends. 


Pain  75 

Let  us  take  a  step  higher  than  the  ani- 
mal world.  Consider,  for  a  little,  the  lower 
grades  of  human  life.  We  find  sometimes  our 
finished — as  we  imagine  it  to  be — civilisation, 
our  refined,  sensitive  modern  world,  looking 
down  on  the  barbarous  races,  and  thinking 
that  God  has  treated  them  very  harshly  in 
that,  having  created  them  at  all,  He  has  not 
lifted  them  to  some  higher  grade  of  existence 
by  some  sudden  process. 

Here,  again,  we  look  down  upon  these  lower 
ranges  of  life,  and  import  into  these  people 
our  feeling,  our  sympathies,  our  way  of  look- 
ing at  life,  and  judge  that  life  as  something 
dreadful  because  it  would  be  something  dread- 
ful to  us  if  we  were  suddenly  thrust  down 
among  them  and  compelled  to  share  it.  But 
it  is  not  dreadful  at  all  to  them.  We  do 
a  similar  thing  in  supposing  that  a  man  feels 
poor  because  he  does  not  have  as  large  an  in- 
come as  we  have.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  possi- 
bly, his  wages  have  been  raised ;  and  he  feels 
rich.  We  should  feel  very  poor  if  we  had  to 
live  on  his  wages  even  after  they  were  raised. 
But  it  is  all  a  matter  of  comparison. 

These  lower  races  are  comfortable.  They 
have  their  own  joys,  their  pleasures,  but  they 
are  not  capable  of  sympathising  with  and  shar- 


76  Life's  Dark  Problems 

ing  in  the  things  that  delight  us.  If  we  should 
by  a  bit  of  false  philanthropy  lift  them  to  our 
level  suddenly,  and  try  to  make  them  live  our 
life,  we  should  simply  make  them  miserable. 
They  wish  to  lead  their  own  ;  and  they  enjoy 
a  higher  kind  only  as  they  gradually  grow  into 
the  ability  to  comprehend  it,  to  feel  it,  to 
sympathise  with  it. 

I  do  not  think,  then,  that  we  are  very  wise 
if  we  spend  our  years  in  pitying  the  barbarous 
races  of  the  world  ;  and  still  less  are  we  wise 
if  we  make  their  condition  a  reason  for  charg- 
ing the  government  of  the  universe  with  in- 
justice because  they  do  not  share  our  joys. 

Consider,  again,  what  we  sometimes  speak 
of  as  the  lower  grades  of  life  in  our  civilised 
country.  You  would  not  like  to  be  forced  to 
live  in  what  we,  perhaps  without  much  judg- 
ment, sometimes  speak  of  as  the  slums  on  the 
east  or  the  west  side.  It  would  be  a  dreadful 
life  to  you ;  and,  as  you  go  among  these  peo- 
ple, your  sympathy  or  pity  is  called  out.  It 
ought  to  be  to  this  extent  at  least,  that  you 
ought  to  be  ready  to  do  everything  you  can 
to  help  those  that  are  willing  to  take  a  step 
forward  and  upward.  You  ought  even  to  go 
farther,  if  you  could.  You  ought  to  kindle  in 
some  one  who  does  not  care  a  desire  for  some- 


Pain  77 

thing  higher  and  better,  and  then  you  ought 
to  do  what  you  can  to  meet  and  satisfy  that 
desire.  But  do  not  imagine  that  the  kind  of 
lives  they  live  are  lives  of  unmitigated  suf- 
fering. 

Most  of  them  are  quite  contented,  quite 
happy,  quite  comfortable.  Many  are  satisfied 
with  the  kind  of  tenements  they  live  in.  A 
great  many  of  them  who  have  migrated  to  this  rf~ 
country,  as  poorly  off  as  they  seem  to  us  to 
be,  are  doubtless  very  much  better  off  than  ffc*- *+**-*- 
they  were  in  the  homes  which  they  have  left. 
So  they  are  on  the  road  to  something  better, 
Do  not  pity  them  to  the  extent  of  charging 
their  condition  as  a  count  in  the  indictment 
of  the  goodness  of  the  universe.  They  are  so 
contented,  many  of  them,  that,  if  you  offer 
them  what  we  regard  as  a  good  deal  better 
way  of  living,  they  will  decline  it.  They  pre- 
fer the  kind  of  life  they  live  to  the  cleanest, 
sweetest,  and  happiest  life  you  can  imagine  in 
the  country. 

That  means  that  this  country  life  does  not 
appeal  to  them  ;  and  you  cannot  suddenly  put 
into  their  natures  tastes  and  desires  which 
are  not  there.  These  things  are  of  slow  growth. 
Recognise,  then,  the  conditions  which  sur- 
round these  people.  Recognise  the  facts,  and 


78  Life's  Dark  Problems 

try  to  estimate  the  problem  as  being  simply 
what  it  is. 

One  other  point.  We  sometimes  pity  the 
healthy  poor, — the  poor  in  the  country,  the 
poor  boys  growing  up  on  farms,  healthy  in 
body,  healthy  in  mind.  I  remember  a  pict- 
ure,— a  barefoot,  ragged  boy  in  a  dusty  coun- 
try road,  a  carriage,  and  a  span  of  horses,  with 
people  finely  dressed,  carelessly  driving  by. 
The  people  glance  at  the  boy  ;  and  probably, 
if  they  care  enough  to  think  about  it  at  all,  it 
is  with  a  sort  of  pity  for  this  ragged  urchin 
who  knows  nothing  about  their  life.  They 
look  down  upon  him,  He_js^_gart_of^  the 
problem  of  the  government  of  the  world. 
And  yet  that  boy  was  living  in  countries  and 
lands  that  perhaps  they  had  never  dreamed 
of.  He  created  worlds,  by  his  imaginative 
powers,  that  were  full  of  splendour  and  won- 
der, full  of  hope.  He  saw  and  realised  ambi- 
tions. He  looked  forward  to  things  that  he 
should  carve  out  at  some  future  day ;  and  he 
was  entirely  unconscious  that  he  needed  any 
pity.  He  did  not  want  any,  surely.  He  was 
happy  ;  and  he  lived  in  a  wonder  world  that 
he  himself  had  made. 

Do  not  waste  your  time  pitying  the  healthy, 
honest  poor,  those  who  can  earn  a  living, 


Pain  79 

those  who  can  make  a  little  gain  from  year  to 
year,  those  who  can  look  forward  dreaming  of 
something  better,  those  who  through  these 
experiences  are  working  out  character  and 
achieving  destiny. 

The  noblest  men  (many  of  them)  that  this 
country  has  produced  have  come  out  of  boy- 
hoods like  that.  They  call  for  no  sympathy  ; 
and  they  are  not  legitimately  any  count  in  any 
indictment  against  the  goodness  of  the  world. 

I  wish  now  to  notice  another  phase  of  this 
subject.  I  have  touched  on  some  of  the  lower 
forms  of  life,  as  we  ordinarily  think  of  them, — 
some  of  the  lower  grades  of  human  life ;  and 
now  I  wish  to  ask  you  to  consider  the  kind  of 
lives  that  we  ourselves  are  leading,  and  what 
bearing  they  have  on  our  problem.  Are  we 
as  badly  off  as  we  think  we  are  ? 

In  the  first  place,  I  wish  to  say  that  I  do 
not  believe  that  any  of  you  relatively  ever 
suffered  one-half  as  much  as  you  think  you 
have.  We  have  ten  or  fifteen  beautiful  sunny 
days.  We  plan  perhaps  some  excursion  or 
some  journey  on  the  next  day ;  and  it  storms. 
What  do  we  say  ?  Why,  it  always  storms 
when  we  wish  to  do  anything  ! 

We  remember  so  easily  the  things  that  go 
athwart  our  plans.  We  forget  so  easily  the 


8o  Life's  Dark  Problems 

long  stretches  of  sunny,  comfortable  hours. 
Look  back  over  your  lives  now,  and  try  to 
make  a  fair  estimate.  How  much  pain  have 
you  really  suffered  as  compared  with  the  hours 
and  days  and  weeks  and  months  that  have 
been  comparatively  free  from  pain  ? 

The  pain  in  most  of  our  lives  is  practically 
infinitesimal  as  compared  with  the  comfort  ; 
and  yet  there  is  a  certain  touch  of  egotism 
about  us.  If  we  have  nothing  else  to  be 
proud  of,  we  try  to  be  proud  of  the  fact  that 
we  have  suffered  more  than  anybody  else,  or 
have  had  worse  trials  and  troubles  than  any- 
body else.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  case  of 
the  most  of  us,  it  is  not  at  all  true. 

Now  I  wish  to  suggest  another  line  of 
thought.  How  much  of  the  suffering  that  we 
have  had  to  bear,  how  much  of  the  pain,  has 
been  absolutely  necessary  ?  How  much  of  the 
world's  pain  have  we  a  right  to  charge  against 
the  government  of  God,  and  how  much  of  it 
are  we  ourselves  responsible  for  ?  Remember 
now  we  wish  to  get  at  the  facts.  We  wish  to 
find  how  much  we  have  a  right  to  charge 
against  the  goodness  of  the  universe ;  and  we 
have  no  right  to  charge  anything  except  neces- 
sary and  inevitable  pain. 

How  much  of  the  pain  that  you  and  I  have 


Pain  8 1 

suffered  from,  how  much  that  the  world  suffers 
from  to-day,  is  caused  by  vice,  the  breaking  of 
God's  laws  ?  How  much  is  caused  by  crime, 
the  breaking  of  human  laws  ?  How  much  of 
the  pain  is  caused  by  words  that  need  not  have 
been  spoken  ?  How  much  is  caused  by  acts 
that  need  not  have  been  done  ?  How  much  of 
the  pain  that  we  suffer  through  illness  is  pain 
that  might  have  been  avoided  ? 

We  inherit  illness  sometimes  from  our 
fathers  and  mothers  or  a  far-away  ancestor ; 
but  a  large  part  of  the  illness  we  suffer  from 
we  have  brought  upon  ourselves, — eating, 
drinking,  careless  living,  indulging  this  way 
and  that,  disregarding  the  laws  of  our  bodies, 
determined  to  have  the  immediate  indulgence, 
rejoicing  in  that, — not  thanking  anybody  for 
that, — but,  when  the  inevitable  pain  comes, 
crying  out  against  the  goodness  of  God. 

How  many  mothers'  hearts  are  broken  that 
need  not  have  been  ?  How  many  wives  are 
crushed  needlessly  by  their  husbands  ?  How 
many  husbands  are  made  unhappy  needlessly 
by  their  wives?  How  many  children's  lives 
are  narrowed,  imbittered  needlessly,  by  fathers 
and  mothers  ?  How  many  people  are  injured 
because  we  wish  to  get  ahead  a  little  faster 
than  conditions  legitimately  permit  us  to  in  a 

6 


82  Life's  Dark  Problems 

business  way?  How  many  times  have  you 
endeavoured  to  crush  a  competitor,  no  matter 
how  much  it  cost  him  in  suffering  or  wealth  ? 

How  many  cruel  wars, — the  concentration 
of  every  vice,  every  crime,  every  conceivable 
evil,  every  imaginable  pain,  multiplied  by  the 
thousand  and  the  tens  of  thousands  in  utterly 
needless  wars !  Shall  we  charge  this  against 
God  ?  Do  we  dare  to,  as  we  look  Him  in  the 
face,  and  think  that  we  are  disregarding  every 
one  of  His  laws  in  bringing  about  these  hor- 
rible results  that  need  not  exist  at  all  ? 

How  much  suffering  do  we  bring  upon  our- 
selves through  envy,  through  jealousy,  through 
personal  antipathies  and  hatreds,  in  every  con- 
ceivable way  ? 

Now  what  I  wish  to  point  out  is  this.  That 
this  needless  pain  we  have  not  to  explain  at 
all  as  touching  the  goodness  of  God.  I  waive 
these  entirely  one  side,  when  you  come  to  me 
and  present  them  as  part  of  the  problem  im- 
peaching the  justice  of  the  government  of  the 
world.  I  say  they  are  no  part  of  our  problem. 
Bring  to  me  only  those  things  that  are  part  of 
God's  plan,  that  are  inevitable  in  the  nature  of 
things,  and  that  we  have  not  needlessly  created. 

It  is  only  these  necessary  pains  that  I  at- 
tempt to  explain,  that  I  am  trying  to  reconcile 


Pain  83 

with  the  goodness  of  God.  I  believe,  then, — 
and  I  ask  you  to  study  each  case  by  itself,  and 
see  if  my  statement  be  not  true, — that  every 
necessary  pain  in  the  universe  is  something  to 
thank  God  for,  instead  of  something  needing 
to  be  explained. 

Let  me  give  you  my  reason.  People  curi- 
ously and  illogically  imagine  all  sorts  of  absurd 
worlds.  I  have  not  time  to  go  into  the  matter 
at  length  ;  but  it  is  an  absurdity  on  the  face  of 
it  to  suppose  that  God  could  create  a  perfectly 
good  and  happy  world,  and  one  perfectly  wise, 
all  in  a  minute,  by  sheer  exercise  of  power.  It 
is  an  absurdity  in  its  mere  statement.  Think 
it  out  for  yourselves.  There  are  three  or  four 
points  which,  it  seems  to  me,  are  conclusive  in 
this  matter.  If  we  are  to  exist  at  all,  then 
pain,  a  certain  amount  of  it,  the  possibility  of 
it,  is  inevitable.  If  you  will  choose  existence, 
you  must  choose  at  least  the  possibility  of  pain 
along  with  it ;  and  God  Himself  cannot  help 
it.  It  is  not  a  question  of  power.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion as  to  possibility. 

Think  for  a  moment.  /A  nervous  system 
which  is  capable  of  exquisite  pleasure  must  be 
equally  capable  of  exquisite  pain.^  It  is  capable 
of  feeling ;  and,  if  it  can  feel  'that  which  is 
agreeable,  of  course  it  can  feel  that  which  is 


84  Life's  Dark  Problems 

disagreeable  ;  and,  unless  a  perpetually  recur- 
ring miracle  keeps  you  from  making  a  mistake, 
then  pain,  of  course,  must  come. 

Can  you  imagine  a  piano,  or  a  manufacturer 
of  pianos  making  an  instrument,  that,  rightly 
touched,  shall  produce  exquisite  harmony, 
that  would  not  under  a  blunderer's  hands  pro- 
duce a  discord  ?  The  thing  is  absurd  on  the 
face  of  it.  The  possibility  of  pleasure,  then, 
the  possibility  of  feeling  anything,  carries  with 
it  the  possibility  of  feeling  pain. 

And  now,  in  the  next  place,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  we  should  feel  pain  if  we  are  to 
continue  to  exist.  If  some  power  could  bring 
into  the  universe  a  race  of  beings  incapable  of 
feeling  pain,  they  would  be  wiped  out  of  exist- 
ence within  a  month.  What  would  they  do  ? 
They  would  be  continually  getting  in  the  way 
of  the  moving  forces  of  the  universe  ;  and,  un- 
less it  hurt  so  that  they  learned  to  keep  out  of 
the  way,  they  would  inevitably  be  crushed  out 
of  existence.  Suppose  it  did  not  hurt  to  fall 
into  the  fire ;  suppose  it  did  not  hurt  to  break 
an  arm  or  a  leg ;  suppose  it  did  not  hurt  to  fall 
over  a  precipice ;  suppose  it  did  not  hurt  to  be 
run  over  by  an  automobile  in  the  street, — sup- 
pose that  none  of  these  things  hurt,  how  should 
we  learn  to  keep  out  of  the  way  ? 


Pain  85 

The  third  point.  There  could  be  no  con- 
sciousness if  there  were  no  pain.  What  do  I 
mean  ?  I  mean  that  the  basis^of  all  conscious- 
ness is  contrast  To  illustrate  :  if  all  the  world 
were  of  one  colour,  there  would  be  no  colour ; 
and  it  would  be  as  though  we  were  blind.  It 
is  only  because  there  are  differences  in  things 
that  we  observe  anything  or  note  the  distinc- 
tion between  one  thing  and  another.  If  a 
chair  and  a  table  were  precisely  alike,  who 
would  ever  know  that  there  were  such  things 
as  chairs  and  tables  ?  If  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  pain,  who  would  know  that  he  had 
ever  been  happy  ?  If  from  the  very  beginning 
we  had  been  perfectly  free  from  pain,  we 
should  not  know  it.  We  could  not  understand 
our  condition.  It  would  mean  nothing  to  us. 
There  would  be  nothing  to  rejoice  in  either. 
It  is  only  against  a  background  of  pain  that 
we  know  what  pleasure  means,  that  we  can 
taste  the  ecstasy  of  numberless  delights. 

And  now,  in  the  next  place,  it  follows  that 
all  necessary  pain  is  protective,  guardian  in  its 
nature.  All  the  necessary  pain  in  the  world  is 
a  token  of  God's  care  and  guarding,  protect- 
ing love.  All  necessary  pain  is  merely  a 
sign-board  set  up, — "  No  Thoroughfare," — 
"  Dangerous  Passing," — warning  us  away  from 


86  Life's  Dark  Problems 

things  that  would  harm  us.  There  is  no  other 
kind  of  necessary  pain  in  the  universe  but 
that. 

Did  you  ever  note  the  fact  that  those  parts 
of  the  body  that  are  the  most  exposed  and 
that  need  protecting  most  are  the  ones  that  are 
specially  sensitive,  capable  of  exquisite  pain  ? 
Did  you  ever  notice  that  in  the  lower  forms  of 
life  pain  is  warning,  protecting,  almost  always  ? 

If  a  man  is  ill,  he  suffers  pain.  Nature  is 
telling  him  that  something  is  wrong,  and  that 
he  must  attend  to  it.  If  a  man's  illness  reaches 
a  point  where  it  is  hopeless,  almost  always  the 
pain  ceases.  There  is  no  use  in  warning  any 
longer.  So  long  as  you  are  keenly  sensitive 
to  pain,  there  is  hope  for  you.  It  means  that 
the  body  is  alive.  It  means  that  it  is  attempt- 
ing to  exercise  its  recuperative  power. 

So,  everywhere  in  life  where  you  find  pain, 
it  is  God  telling  you  that  you  must  look  out, 
that  you  are  doing  something  wrong,  that  you 
are  disregarding  His  laws.  In  society  every- 
where this  is  universally  true.  So  that  all 
necessary  pain  is  inevitable  in  the  nature  of 
things  not  only,  but  is  a  token  of  God's  tender, 
loving,  fatherly  care. 

I  quoted  at  the  outset  these  words  from 
the  unknown  author  of  the  Book  of  Revela- 


Pain  87 

tion  :  "  Neither  shall  pain  be  any  more."  When 
will  that  be  true  ?  I  do  not  believe  in  any 
other  world  where  everybody  is  either  suffer- 
ing perfectly  or  enjoying  perfectly,  either  the 
one  or  the  other.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
best  person  in  the  world  the  minute  he  goes 
into  the  other  life  is  in  perfect  bliss,  is  where 
he  will  never  know  the  shadow  of  pain  again. 
I  do  not  expect  any  such  condition  as  that  for 
a  million  years, — how  many  millions  I  do  not 
know. 

We  are  told  that  Jesus  left  the  glory  that 
he  had  in  the  other  life,  and  came  here  to  help 
us ;  and  must  we  not  think  of  him  as  feel- 
ing an  exquisite  delight  in  helping,  such  as 
the  harps  and  the  singing  could  never  have 
brought  him  ?  If  we  are  half  men,  we  would 
rather  suffer  and  so  help  as  long  as  anybody 
else  suffers  and  needs  help.  Heaven  may 
stand  open  as  long  as  it  will.  I  do  not  expect 
to  enter  and  stay  there,  even  if  I  am  permitted, 
so  long  as  there  is  somebody  outside  that 
needs  help,  and  so  long  as  people  are  pour- 
ing, millions  and  millions  every  year,  over 
into  that  life,  half  formed,  half  developed. 
How  many  years,  how  many  ages,  will  it  be 
before  they  need  help  no  longer  ? 

It  is  the  delight  of  sympathy  and  love  to  help 


88  Life's  Dark  Problems 

those  that  need  it.  So  I  expect  no  aimless 
lotus-eaters,  Rasselas  kind  of  felicity  in  any 
other  life.  I  do  not  want  it.  I  want  the  sense 
of  effort,  the  sense  of  victory,  the  sense  of 
overcoming.  I  want  something  to  do ;  and 
so  long  as  there  are  poor  blind,  wandering 
souls  anywhere  in  the  universe,  the  people  who 
are  Christ-like  will  be  going  out  after  them 
until  all  are  gathered  in.  And  even  then,  in 
the  perfect  consummation  of  all  things,  if  we 
can  imagine  it,  we  should  not  know  that  we 
were  happy  except  for  our  sacred  memories  of 
darkness  and  tears  and  heartache  and  pain. 


CHAPTER  V 
LIFE'S    INCOMPLETENESS 

SOME  years  ago  I  asked  a  friend  if  he  had 
ever  seen  any  one  who  was  content  with 
himself   and   with    his   conditions.     He   said, 

"  Yes,  once,  at ,"  mentioning  the  name  of 

a  well-known  asylum  for  the  insane.  He  told 
me  that  he  found  there  a  number  of  persons 
who  imagined  themselves  kings  and  queens,  or 
famous  persons  of  one  sort  or  another,  and 
that  they  seemed  perfectly  satisfied !  This 
thought  recalls  to  mind  a  saying  of  one  of  the 
most  famous  people  in  America.  He  told  me 
within  a  year  or  two  that,  in  his  judgment,  any 
man  ought  to  be  a  pessimist  by  the  time  he  was 
fifty.  In  other  words,  he  believed  that  by  that 
time  a  man  would  have  found  out  how  unsatis- 
factory the  world  is,  how  illusive  are  our  visions, 
how  poor  is  human  life. 

When  I  was  a  boy,  I  remember  hearing 
father  refer  to  a  man  who  was  famous  then  as 
being  a  millionaire, — though  he  would  be  lost 
to-day  among  them, — and  he  said  that  some 

89 


90  Life's  Dark  Problems 

one  asked  him  how  much  money  a  man  would 
need  in  order  to  satisfy  him.  His  reply  was, 
"  A  little  more."  I  have  never  seen  any  one 
yet  who  was  really  contented.  Most  persons, 
by  the  time  they  get  well  along  in  years,  are  apt 
to  hold  views  and  theories  which  are  a  little 
discouraging  and  disheartening.  Read  these 
two  stanzas  from  the  last  canto  of  Childe 
Harold,  giving  you  Byron's  summing  up  of 
this  thought : 

"  We  wither  from  our  youth.     We  gasp  away, 
Sick,  sick;  unfound  the  boon,  unslaked  the  thirst; 
Though  to  the  last,  in  verge  of  our  decay, 
Some  phantom  lures,  such  as  we  sought  at  first, 
But  all  too  late ;  so  are  we  doubly  curst. 
Love,  fame,  ambition,  avarice, — 't  is  the  same  ; 
Each  idle,  and  all  ill,  and  none  the  worst. 
For  all  are  meteors  with  a  different  name, 
And  Death  the  sable  smoke  where  vanishes  the  flame. 

"  Few,  none,  find  what  they  love,  or  could  have  loved, 
Though  accident,  blind  contact,  and  the  strong 
Necessity  of  loving  have  removed 
Antipathies, — but  to  recur  erelong 
Envenomed  with  irrevocable  wrong. 
And  circumstance,  that  unspiritual  god 
And  miscreator,  makes  and  helps  along 
Our  coming  evils  with  a  crutch-like  rod 
Whose  touch  turns  Hope  to  dust, — the  dust  we  all  have 
trod." 


Life's  Incompleteness  91 

Not  long  ago  I  was  looking  over  a  little 
volume  which  the  late  Francis  H.  Underwood 
published  concerning  Mr.  Lowell,  soon  after 
his  death.  He  was  referring  to  the  period  pre- 
ceding the  war  when  young  men  with  fine  con- 
secration and  high  hopes  gave  themselves  for 
the  salvation  of  the  country  ;  and  he  says  : 
"  Generous  and  beautiful  illusion  !  How  dark 
would  the  world  be  to  young  hearts  if  they 
were  to  see  it  as  after  threescore  years  it 
appears  to  be ! "  This  is  Mr.  Underwood's 
judgment  of  the  outcome  of  life.  I  am  glad 
to  say  that  I  do  not  at  all  agree  with  him. 

I  would  like  to  suggest  a  question  here  for 
you  to  have  in  mind  as  I  go  on, — whether  all 
these  complaints,  this  pessimism,  these  dissatis- 
factions, this  unsated  hunger,  this  unslaked 
thirst,  may  not  have  some  tremendous  sig- 
nificance of  which  we  have  been  apt  to  take 
no  account.  Meanwhile  I  wish  to  complete 
the  picture  of  the  complaints  that  men  have 
made. 

The  poet  Gray,  in  his  famous  ode  On  a 
Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College  gives  voice 
to  the  commonly  expressed  opinion  that  child- 
hood is  the  happiest  time  of  life,  the  unfortun- 
ate thing  about  it  being  that  the  children  do 
not  happen  to  know  that  they  are  happy,  which 


92  Life's  Dark  Problems 

makes  it  all  the  sadder.     Looking  at  the  child- 
ren on  the  playground,  he  says : 

"  Alas!     Regardless  of  their  doom, 

The  little  victims  play; 
No  sense  they  have  of  ills  to  come, 
Nor  care  beyond  to-day. 

*'  Yet,  ah!  why  should  they  know  their  fate, 
Since  sorrow  never  comes  too  late, 

And  happiness  too  swiftly  flies  ? 

Thought  would  destroy  their  paradise. 

No  more; — where  ignorance  is  bliss, 
'Tis  folly  to  be  wise." 

This  cry  over  the  transitoriness  and  unsatis- 
factoriness  of  human  life  comes  to  us  from 
every  age  and  from  every  people,  from  every 
class  and  every  condition  of  men  and  women. 
The  things  we  have  cherished  most  and  cared 

Ifor  most,  we  somehow  get  the  feeling,  are  the 
first  to  be  taken  from  us.     It  is  quite  possible, 
let  me  suggest,  that  we  may  overlook  a  thou- 
\  sand  things  that  are  not  taken  away.     But, 
/  when  that  one  thing  is  taken,  it  makes  so  keen, 
(   sharp,  painful  an  impression  upon  us  that  it 
\seems  to  fill  the  whole  of  life !     I  must  recall 
once  more  words  which  are  so  familiar  that 
they  have  become  trite,  because  people  have 
found  in  them  an  expression  of  this  feeling : 


Life's  Incompleteness  93 

"  Oh,  ever  thus,  from  childhood's  hour, 

I  've  seen  my  fondest  hopes  decay; 
I  never  loved  a  tree  or  flower, 

But  't  was  the  first  to  fade  away. 
I  never  nursed  a  dear  gazelle, 

To  glad  me  with  its  soft  black  eye, 
But  when  it  came  to  know  me  well, 

And  love  me,  it  was  sure  to  die." 

This  seems  to  be  the  testimony  of  the  ages. 
The  glamour  and  the  glory  of  life  cover  the 
world  when  we  are  young  ;  but  they  fade,  and 
leave  it  very  commonplace,  as  we  get  older. 
The  classic  utterance  of  that  generally-believed- 
to-be-true  idea,  but  which  I  do  not  believe  to 
be  true  at  all,  is  found  in  those  wonderfully 
musical  words  of  Wordsworth,  in  his  ode  on 
Immortality,  where  he  tells  us  that  we  come 
from  God  in  our  infancy,  trailing  clouds  of 
glory  : 

"  Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy; 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows, 

He  sees  it  in  his  joy; 

The  youth,  who  daily  farther  from  the  east 
Must  travel,  still  is  Nature's  priest, 

And  by  the  vision  splendid 

Is  on  his  way  attended; 
At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 


94  Life's  Dark  Problems 

I  have  asked  you  to  note  these  various  ex- 
pressions that  literature  has  given  us  of  the 
common  feeling  about  life,  that  you  may  see 
how  they  give  voice  to  the  feelings,  the  ques- 
tionings, the  murmurings,  of  your  own  hearts. 
They  would  not  be  so  popular,  we  should  not 
be  so  familiar  with  them,  did  they  not  seem  to 
us  to  embody  some  great,  important,  universal 
truth. 

Not  only  do  the  glory  and  beauty  of  the 
outer  world  fade  and  disappear,  but  our  human 
relationships  are  so  unsatisfactory,  so  full  of 
change !  How  many  of  us  have  kept  the 
friendships  of  our  boyhood  or  girlhood,  or  of 
our  youth  ?  I  have  kept  in  fairly  close  per- 
sonal touch  with  just  one  of  the  boys  with 
whom  I  used  to  go  to  school.  There  are  three 
or  four  or  half  a  dozen  others,  boys  and  girls 
of  my  school-days,  from  whom  I  hear  occasion- 
ally ;  but  they  are  no  part  of  my  present  life. 
We  swore  eternal  friendship  in  those  days ; 
but  it  did  not  endure.  It  seems  to  be  no- 
body's fault:  the  fault  is  in  the  constitution 
and  course  of  things.  One  boy  entered  one 
business,  and  another,  another ;  one  settled  in 
Maine,  another  went  to  California  or  to  the 
South  or  to  Europe.  One  course  of  study 
was  followed  by  one,  and  something  else  by 


Life's  Incompleteness  95 

another ;  and  so  we  grew  apart.  When  we 
happen  to  meet,  if  we  are  fortunate  enough  to 
recognise  each  other,  we  look  into  the  eyes  of 
practical  strangers.  We  do  not  see  the  per- 
sons we  used  to  see  in  the  years  that  are  so 
far  away. 

6  When  we  turn  to  consider  our  life  ambi- 
ions,  how  many  of  us  have  realised  them  ? 
We  dreamed,  when  we  were  boys,  that  we 
might  be  possible  candidates  for  the  Presi- 
dency. If  not  that,  we  were  to  make  a  record 
for  ourselves  in  some  way.  Were  we  not  all 
familiar  with  Longfellow's  lines  ? 

"  Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us 

We  can  make  our  lives  sublime, 
And,  departing,  leave  behind  us 
Footprints  on  the  sands  of  time." 

We  had  ambitions  to  do  something  that 
should  make  the  world  notice  us,  make  the 
world  remember  us.  We  would  be  great  in 
some  department  of  life.  But  the  years  have"  \ 
gone  on ;  and  some  of  us  are  glad  if  we 
have  been  able  to  fill  some  position  where  we 
could  earn  a  quiet,  honourable,  but  obscure 
livelihood.  And  I  suppose  that,  if  any  of  us 
have  attained  anything  like  what  we  dreamed 
might  be  possible,  we  are  not  a  bit  satisfied 


96  Life's  Dark  Problems 

with  it.  It  has  become  commonplace  to  us 
now.  You  remember  that  Campbell  says  : 

"  'T  is  distance  lends  enchantment  to  the  view." 

A  mountain  top  is  clothed  with  a  blue  mantle 
of  mystery  and  beauty  ;  but,  if  you  climb  the 
mountain,  the  blue  mantle  is  not  there.  It  is 
crowning  some  other  peak  far  away.  When 
we  were  boys,  we  were  told  that  there  was  a 
pot  of  gold  at  the  foot  of  the  rainbow.  It 
looked  to  be  only  over  in  the  next  field  or  on 
some  near-by  hill ;  but,  when  we  got  there,  the 
end  of  the  rainbow  was  always  somewhere  else. 
We  never  reached  the  realisation  of  the  thing 
that  we  dreamed.  ""W  \*  \^- 

I  remember  a  famous  woman,  who  was  dis- 
tinguished on  two  continents  as  a  physician. 
She  had  lived  a  rather  lonely  life,  devoting 
herself  to  her  profession.  In  her  old  age  she 
confessed  sadly  to  a  friend  that  she  found  very 
little  satisfaction  in  her  life.  She  was  glad  for 
the  good  that  she  had  been  able  to  do ;  but 
she  said,  with  a  sigh,  that  that  woman  was  for- 
tunate who  could  find  love  and  a  home  and  a 
child  rather  than  distinction  in  any  career. 

You  write  a  book.  By  the  time  you  have 
written  it,  it  is  commonplace  to  you,  however 


Life's  Incompleteness  97 

remarkable  it  may  be  to  those  who  read  it  for 
the  first  time.  So  any  position  that  a  man  at- 
tains loses  the  wonder  and  the  glory  of  it  by 
the  time  he  gets  there  ;  and  he  is  always  look- 
ing ahead,  and  thinking  of  something  else  not 
yet  realised.  That  seems  to  be  a  part  of  the 
doom  that  is  laid  upon  the  kind  of  people  that 
we  are. 

Consider  the  case  of  the  man  who  has  at- 
tained his  ambition  in  the  direction  of  wealth. 
I  think  it  is  wonderfully  fortunate  for  a  man  to 
have  at  least  a  little  more  money  than  he 
needs  to  live  on,  in  case  of  illness  or  a  thou- 
sand things  which  may  happen, — it  adds  so 
much  to  his  comfort,  his  ease,  his  sense  of  in- 
dependence;  but  I  have  never  .yet.  found  a 
man  who  had  become  so  wealthy  that  he  was 
satisfied  and  content.  I  remember  a  conver- 
sation with  a  great  builder  in  the  West,  who 
had  become  wealthy.  He  started  as  a  day 
labourer,  a  carpenter.  He  said:  "I  used  to 
have  to  go  to  work  before  I  had  time  to  read 
the  newspaper ;  and  I  thought  it  was  a  great 
deprivation.  But  now  that  I  have  all  that  I 
can  desire,  now  that  I  can  take  my  ease,  can 
get  up  when  I  please,  do  as  I  please  without 
need  of  keeping  hours,  I  look  back  as  the  time 
of  my  greatest  happiness  to  the  days  when  I 


98  Life's  Dark  Problems 

started   out  in  the  morning  with  my  dinner- 
pail." 

I  was  talking  once  with  a  railroad  president. 
He  had  become  dyspeptic,  nervous,  and  could 
not  sleep;  and  he  said  to  me:  "The  man  I 
envy  most  is  the  baggage-master  at  some  way 
station  in  the  country.  He  has  salary  enough 
to  live  on  and  be  comfortable ;  and  he  has  no 
care,  no  burden,  no  responsibility.  He  can 
eat,  and  digest  his  food,  and  go  to  sleep  at 
night  without  caring  what  happens  before 
morning." 

Do  you  not  see  the  principle  that  lies  here  ? 
If  we  are  souls, — if  I  say, — then  we  cannot  be 
satisfied  with  things,  no  matter  what  they  are. 
Jesus  taught  a  profound  and  significant  truth 
when  he  said,  "  A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in 
the  abundance  of  the  things  which  he  pos- 
sesses." A  man's  life,  mind  you  !  If  he  is  a 
man,  and  if  there  be  within  him  a  great  range 
of  faculty,  of  capacity,  above  the  mere  ability 
to  touch  and  handle,  how  do  you  expect  him 
to  be  satisfied,  when  these  things  are  unfed?' 
That  is  the  great  truth  which  we  need  to  be- 
come familiar  with, — that  a  man  must  feed  his 
manhood.  If  you  do  not  cultivate  and  train 
and  use  these  powers,  they  atrophy  and  die 
and  become  of  no  avail. 


Life's  Incompleteness  99 

A  man's  ideals  are  never  attained.  That  is 
one  of  the  most  significant  things  concerning 
this  marvellous  human  nature  of  ours.  If  you 
find  a  man  satisfied  with  himself  and  what  he 
has  accomplished,  you  will  always  find  a  type 
that  is  low,  undeveloped.  The  higher  the 
man,  the  less  satisfied  he  is.  A  highly  trained 
artist,  master  of  his  art,  master  of  his  hands, 
master  of  his  materials,  is  always  his  own 
severest  critic.  He  can  never  do  anything 
which  is  quite  satisfactory  to  himself.  His 
ideal  always  outruns  his  attainment.  This  is 
as  true  in  the  direction  of  goodness  as  any- 
where else.  There  are  certain  persons  whom 
we  have  decided  to  honour,  as  we  think,  by 
calling  them  "  saints."  They  are  thus  dis- 
tinguished for  goodness  and  for  service.  But, 
if  you  read  their  biographies  or  confessions, 
if  they  have  left  any,  what  do  they  say  about 
themselves  ?  They  regard  themselves  as  any- 
thing but  saintly.  What  has  Paul  to  say  of 
himself  ?  "  Not  as  though  I  had  already  ob- 
tained [attained],  or  were  as  yet  made  perfect." 
We  think  of  him  as  one  of  the  greatest  souls 
of  the  world,  set  apart  by  his  goodness  and 
consecration.  He  talks  about  himself  as  being 
the  very  "  chief  of  sinners."  He  was  sensi- 
tive to  the  imperfections,  which  he  had  learned 


ioo  Life's  Dark  Problems 

v^  ." 

to  discern,  but  of  which  others  perhaps  would 
take  no  note.  The  more  finely  cultivated  the 
ear  of  the  musician,  the  more  sensitive  it  be- 
comes to  the  slightest  discord.  So  we  never 
attain  our  ideal  in  any  department,  in  any  di- 
rection, in  human  life. 

How  is  it  with  the  truth-seeker  ?  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  we  are  proud  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  modern  world.  We  talk  about 
the  wondrous  advance  in  human  knowledge ; 
and  yet  there  never  was  a  time  in  the  history 
of  the  world  when  wise  men  felt  so  utterly 
overwhelmed  with  the  impossibility  of  thor- 
oughly knowing  anything.  Suppose  you  are 
on  board  a  ship  at  sea.  The  fog  has  closed 
down  upon  you,  so  that  you  can  hardly  see 
your  hand  before  your  eyes.  You  go  on  deck, 
and  by  and  by  the  fog  begins  to  thin  and  lift 
a  little.  You  can  see  half  the  length  of  the 
ship.  Gradually  you  can  see  its  whole  out- 
line. Then  there  are  glimpses  of  the  sea  on 
every  hand ;  and  the  fog  lifts  and  lifts,  and 
retreats  and  retreats.  The  area  of  the  visible 
and  the  knowable  grows ;  but  the  area  of  the 
invisible  and  unknowable  keeps  step  with  that 
growth.  The  more  the  fog  recedes,  the 
wider  the  horizon  of  that  which  you  cannot 
discern. 


Life's  Incompleteness  101 

You  are  in  a  valley  at  the  foot  of  a  mount- 
ain. The  world  is  very  small  down  there ; 
and  you  can  see  the  whole  of  it  practically. 
But  begin  to  climb  the  mountain  and  you  see 
more.  Your  vision  enlarges,  the  range  of 
your  knowledge  grows,  and  the  range  of  the 
unknown  grows  also.  So  man  learns  the  les- 
son after  a  while  that,  the  more TieTknows;  the 
less  he  knows. 

Start  with  a  grass-blade,  and  begin  to  ask 
questions  about  it,  and,  before  you  know  it, 
you  are  face  to  face  with  the  infinite  and  the 
utterly  insoluble.  We  become  used  to  things 
that  we  see  and  touch  every  day ;  and  we  fancy 
that  we  know  them.  We  have  labelled  them ; 
but  how  much  do  we  really  know  ?  I  lift  my 
hand — how  ?  I  do  not  know.  Nobody  in  the 
world  knows  how  I  am  able  to  do  so  simple  a 
thing  as  that.  I  look  before  me,  and  see  your 
faces.  How  ?  I  do  not  know  ;  nobody  knows. 
There  is  nothing  that  we  know  thoroughly 
and  completely.  So  men  can  get  discouraged 
sometimes,  and  think  the  universe  is  a  puzzle 
to  which  there  is  no  answer.  In  one  sense,  it 
is  fortunate  that  this  is  true.  Suppose  I  could 
solve  to-day  all  the  riddles  of  the  universe ; 
what  would  it  mean  ?  It  would  mean  that  I 
had  read  my  death  warrant.  There  would  be 


102  Life's  Dark  Problems 

nothing  rnore_toj?ve  for.     The  only  rational 
f  basis  for  belief  in  the  immortal  life  is  in  the 
fact  that  we  can  study  and  grow  and  advance 
forever  and  forever,   and  never  be  through, 
'here  will  always  be  something  fresh,  some- 
thing beyond,  something  piquing  our  curiosity, 
something  leading  us  on.     And  so  it  is  that 
the  greatest  men  of  the  world  have  been  the 
humblest.     You  remember  the  saying  of  New=\ 
ton  in  his  old  age,  that  he  was  like  a  little  child    ]i 
playing  on  the  seashore.     He  had  been  able  to  /) 
discover  now  and  then  a  pebble  brighter  than/y 
his  fellows  had  found ;   but  the  whole  grear 
ocean  of  truth  lay  still  unexplored  before  him. 
You  recall  that  wise  saying  of  Lessing,  that,  if 
God  were  to  hold  in  one  hand  the  truth  and  in 
the  other  the  privilege  of  seeking  for  truth,  and 
permit  him  to  take  his  choice,  he  would  say  : 
O  God,  the  truth  is  for  Thee  alone.     Give  me 
the  privilege  and  the  joy  of  search. 

There  is  another  thought  with  which  I  have 
played  sometimes.  I  have  thought  that  it 
might  be  fine  if  the  generations  which  had 
preceded  us  could  have  left  for  us,  not  merely 
the  results  of  their  study  and  their  work,  but 
their  trained  faculties  and  powers  as  well,  so 
that  we  might  start  with  the  advantage,  not 
only  of  what  they  had  accomplished,  but  of 


Life's  Incompleteness  103 

what  they  had  become.  And  yet,  when  I  look 
at  the  idea,  however  alluring  it  may  seem,  I 
detect  that  it  would  be  folly.  In  the  first 
place,  these  people  who  have  gone,  as  I  believe, 
to  another  life,  want  their  own  training,  their 
faculties  and  powers ;  and  they  cannot  afford 
to  leave  them  behind  for  us.  Then  there  is 
another  consideration.  Whatever  is  simply 
given  to  us,  without  any  effort  on  our  part, 
fails  of  its  mission.  We  need  not  merely  the 
accomplished  results  ;  we  need  the  culture  and 
training  which  come  with  the  searching  and 
the  striving  and  the  effort.  It  is  much  better 
for  us  that  we  should  strive,  and  grow  in  the 
striving,  even  if  we  do  not  attain,  than  that  we 
should  have  the  finest  things  in  the  universe 
laid  at  our  feet,  leaving  us  undeveloped  and 
uncultivated  children,  because  we  have  escaped 
the  pain  and  the  effort,  the  toil  and  the  study, 
and  so  have  lost  the  development  which  comes 
from  this  onreaching  and  outreaching  after  the 
things  that  are  before  us. 

I  have  now  at  some  length  gone  over  a  great 
many  departments  of  life,  and  shown  how  in- 
complete, how  unsatisfactory  they  are.  We 
never  get  through,  we  never  attain,  we  never 
find  the  place  where  we  can  say,  Now  we  are 
satisfied  ;  let  us  sit  down  and  rest.  But  there 


104  Life's  Dark  Problems 

are  a  few  other  considerations  which  seem  to 
me  to  abate  the  fault  we  are  inclined  to  find. 
I  wish  to  call  attention  to  a  few  of  them. 

The  old  Roman  Stoic,  Seneca,  has  given  us 
a  suggestion  that  may  serve  our  need.  He 
says, — I  give  only  his  thought :  When  we  are 
finding  fault  because  things  are  taken  away 
from  us,  is  it  not  well  for  us  to  remember  the 
good  of  their  having  been  given  to  us  ?  While 
we  have  things,  are  they  not  good  ?  A  beauti- 
ful morning, — was  it  not  beautiful  ?  A  magni- 
ficent sunrise, — was  it  not  just  as  magnificent 
as  though  it  had  lasted  all  day  long  ?  Should 
we  have  thought  it  was  quite  as  beautiful  if  it 
had  lasted  all  day  long  ?  A  lovely  experience 
that  we  have  gone  through, — was  it  not  lovely  ? 
Suppose  a  friend  takes  you  for  a  whirl  in  the 
country  in  his  automobile.  You  had  no  claim 
to  this  pleasure :  it  was  given  you  outright  as 
a  joy,  a  fine  experience.  Instead  of  being 
grateful  for  it,  after  the  drive  is  at  an  end,  will 
you  find  fault  with  the  owner  because  he  did 
not  give  you  the  machine  ?  Will  you  find  fault 
because  the  drive  was  not  longer?  This  is 
what  we  are  doing  all  the  time.  We  receive 
good  things,  for  which  we  have  no  claim ;  and 
then,  the  minute  they  are  removed,  we  begin 
to  grumble  and  find  fault  because  we  cannot 


Life's  Incompleteness  105 

keep  them,  instead  of  being  grateful  that  we 
have  had  the  blessed  experience. 

Then  there  is  another  consideration.  Have 
we  really  lost  the  things  we  have  had,  and 
which  we  think  have  passed  away  ?  Have  you 
lost  your  childhood  ?  Have  you  lost  the  friends 
of  your  childhood  ?  Have  you  lost  some  blessed 
experience  that  you  passed  through  last  year  ? 
Have  you  lost  the  early  years  of  your  married 
life  ?  Have  you  lost  the  joy  of  seeing  the 
little  children  round  your  feet,  because  they 
have  grown  up?  Are  these  things  lost,  or  is 
it  not  rather  true  that  all  the  things  that  are 
really  precious,  that  are  important  to  us,  have 
become  a  part  of  us  ?  They  are  wrought  into 
the  very  fibre  of  our  being.  They  are  not 
only  shadowy  images,  memories ;  they  have 
made  us  over.  We  are  different  men  and 
women  from  what  we  should  have  been  but  for 
these.  And  so  we  keep  them.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  ever  really 
lose  anything  important  to  our  lives. 

And  then  there  is  another  consideration.  If 
we  lose  the  poetry,  the  beauty,  the  brightness, 
of  life,  let  us  ask  ourselves  seriously  if  it  is 
not  our  own  fault.  The  faculties  which  we  do 
not  cultivate  become  atrophied ;  they  become 
as  if  they  did  not  exist.  The  world  with 


io6  Life's  Dark  Problems 

which  these  faculties  bring  us  into  contact 
may  seem  to  us  no  longer  to  exist ;  and  yet  it 
may  be  all  round  us,  touching  us  on  every 
hand,  just  as  the  glory  of  the  world  may  en- 
compass one  who  is  blind,  or  the  music  of  the 
world  one  who  is  deaf.  If  we  are  really  anx- 
ious to  come  in  contact  with  these  beautiful, 
poetic,  romantic,  lovely,  spiritual  things,  we 
must  train  and  keep  alive  the  faculties  and 
powers  that  enable  us  to  appreciate  them.  If 
we  do  not,  is  it  God's  fault  that  we  think  the 
world  is  poor,  or  is  it  our  own  fault,  if  we  have 
kept  alive  only  those  things  that  bring  us  in 
contact  with  the  grossest,  the  most  material, 
the  most  commonplace  parts  of  human  life  ? 
Shall  we,  then,  charge  God  with  having  made 
the  world  poor  ? 

There  is  another  suggestion  worthy  of  our 
thought  and  attention.  We  are  on  a  journey 
in  this  world  ;  and  we  should  not  like  it  if  we 
were  stopped,  any  more  than  we  like  it  be- 
cause we  have  to  go  on.  We  are  made  up  of 
a  kind  of  material  that  is  bound  not  to  be  satis- 
fied either  way ;  and  it  is  a  blessed  thing 
that  we  are.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not,  then, 
we  are  on  a  journey.  We  are  travelling  from 
childhood  to  manhood  ;  and  the  question  is,  Is 
it  wiser  for  us  to  keep  our  eyes  fixed  on  some 


Life's  Incompleteness  107 

far-off,  alluring  end,  and  in  the  meantime  to  be 
dissatisfied  because  we  are  not  there,  or  to 
live  by  the  hour,  the  day,  to  appreciate  and 
rejoice  in  the  beauty,  the  good,  the  glory,  as 
we  go  along?  Suppose  I  am  starting  for 
Rome  or  Constantinople  or  Cairo.  I  am  to 
stop  at  a  great  many  smaller  places  by  the 
way.  Now  what  shall  I  do  ?  Shall  I  think 
about  Rome  all  the  time  and  the  glorious  day 
when  I  shall  arrive  there,  and  in  the  meantime 
be  impatient  with  delay?  or  shall  I  say:  In 
this  small  place  where  I  must  pause  there  is  a 
cathedral,  or  a  modest  church,  or  a  picture 
gallery,  or  a  public  hall,  or  a  fine  bit  of  land- 
scape, a  river,  a  waterfall,  something  worth 
seeing.  Shall  I  see  the  beauty  of  these  things 
as  I  go  along  ?  Shall  I  rejoice  in  every  phase 
of  this  journey  ?  Is  not  that,  after  all,  the 
rational  way  to  live  ?  And  yet  the  most  of  us, 
if  we  have  some  desirable  thing  in  the  future 
that  we  are  striving  after,  keep  our  attention 
on  that  so  continuously  that  we  are  dissatisfied 
and  fault-finding  till  we  get  there.  And,  when 
we  get  there,  what  ?  Why,  we  have  made 
ourselves  restless,  dissatisfied,  and  fault-finding 
by  the  way  ;  and  so  that  is  the  kind  of  person 
we  are  when  we  arrive.  We  see  everything 
from  the  point  of  view  of  such  a  person,  so  we 


io8  Life's  Dark  Problems 

are  never  satisfied  with  anything.  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  rational  way  for  us  is  to  live 
by  the  day. 

Now  one  other  consideration.  Would  we 
have  things  different?  Is  there  not  some  charm 
in  their  frailty,  in  the  fact  that  they  change 
and  fade  so  speedily  ?  Would  you  care  for  a 
rose  quite  so  much  if  it  would  keep  its  colour 
and  its  shape  for  a  year  or  for  ten  years  ?  Is 
not  the  very  frailty  one  element  which  makes 
it  seem  so  beautiful,  so  desirable  ?  Are  there 
not  experiences  of  love  and  friendship  that  get 
their  finest  edge  and  quality  from  the  fact  that 
they  are  fleeting?  Does  the  mothernot  love  the 
little  baby  all  the  more  because  she  knows  that 
every  single  day  the  baby  is  changing  and 
will  soon  outgrow  its  babyhood  ?  Because  we 
are  haunted  with  the  shadow  of  illness  and 
death  and  the  unknown,  do  we  not  clasp  in  our 
arms  a  little  more  tenderly  those  whom  we  love, 
and  whom  we  know  we  cannot  always  keep 
just  as  they  are  ?  Would  you  have  it  other- 
wise ?  Perhaps  in  some  hours  we  would. 
But  I  question  whether  God  is  not  wiser  than 
we.  What  does  growth  mean  ?  It  means 
outgrowth  of  course.  It  means  leaving  things 
behind,  because  we  have  outgrown  them. 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  one  of  his  humor- 


Life's  Incompleteness  109 

ous  but  pathetic  poems,  tells  us  of  a  man  who 
wanted  to  be  a  boy  again  ;  but,  when  you 
came  to  question  him  closely,  he  wanted  to 
keep  his  own  boys,  his  wife,  and  the  achieve- 
ments of  his  manhood.  He  was  not  ready  to 
give  these  up  in  order  to  be  a  boy  again. 
But  you  cannot  have  your  own  children  and  the 
wife  and  the  home  and  the  achievements  of 
manhood  until  you  have  outgrown  being  a 
boy.  That  is  what  life  means  everywhere. 
If  you  are  to  become  something  more,  some- 
thing better,  something  higher,  something 
finer,  it  means  that  you  leave  things  behind 
you.  You  remember  how  Paul  expressed  this 
thought :  "  When  I  was  a  child,  I  thought  as  a 
child,  I  spake  as  a  child,  I  understood  as  a 
child ;  but  now  that  I  have  become  a  man,  I 
have  put  away  childish  things."  It  is  lovely 
to  see  a  little  boy  with  his  cart  or  a  little  girl 
with  her  doll ;  but  it  is  one  of  the  most  pitiful 
things  when  a  boy  stops  growing,  and  after  he 
gets  to  be  the  age  of  a  young  man  still  pushes 
his  cart,  or  when  a  little  girl  old  enough  to  be  a 
mother  to  her  own  child  has  not  outgrown 
the  period  of  playing  with  the  doll.  Growth, 
then,  means  outgrowing ;  and  we  have  no 
right  to  find  fault  because  we  must  outgrow 
our  present  conditions. 


no  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Note,  then,  the  marvellous  significance  of 
this  fact  that  we  are  never  satisfied,  that  we 
are  haunted  by  unattainable  ideals.  What 
does  it  mean  ?  It  means  that  this  present 
world  is  not  large  enough  for  us.  If  it  were, 
we  should  read  our  doom  right  here.  Suppose 
some  scientist  should  discover  a  dog  or  a  horse 
who  was  restless,  haunted  by  an  ideal  never 
attained  :  would  he  not  know  this  animal  to  be 
something  different  from  the  ordinary  dog  or 
horse,  capable  of  outgrowing  his  present  con- 
dition ?  If  you  are  in  the  presence  of  a  plant 
that  is  bursting  through  the  roof  of  a  hot-house, 
you  know  it  was  not  intended  for  a  hot-house. 
It  must  be  planted  elsewhere.  If  a  man  who 
had  never  seen  the  ocean  should  go  to  Bath, 
Me.,  and  see  a  ship  on  the  stocks,  even  sup- 
posing he  had  never  known  of  a  body  of  water 
larger  than  a  river,  he  would  say :  There  must 
be  somewhere  more  water  than  I  have  ever 
seen,  or  the  man  who  designed  this  boat 
is  an  idiot.  Escape  the  logic,  if  you  can. 
This  very  fact  that  lives  here  are  incomplete, 
that  they  are  growing,  means  that  there  is 
idiocy  in  the  plan  of  the  universe,  or  else  that 
this  world,  magnificent  as  it  is,  is  unfolding. 
It  is  a  chrysalis  that  you  and  I  are  going  to 
burst  and  escape,  unfolding  wings,  and  finding 


Life's  Incompleteness  in 

ourselves  in  a  place  that  is  larger,  that  will 
make  room  for  us. 

We  have  discovered  at  last  the  theory,  and 
we  have  demonstrated  the  science,  of  evolution; 
and  this  chimes  right  in  with  this  whole  con- 
ception. It  means  that  nothing  is  finished, 
that  the  world  is  not  old  nor  weary.  It  means 
that  the  forces  of  creation  are  as  fresh  to-day 
as  on  any  imagined  morning  when  the  stars 
sang  together.  It  means  that  we  are  en  route, 
that  we  are  going  somewhere,  that  the  universe 
is  going  somewhere,  and  that  the  Power  which  is 
working  through  this  universe  is  unexhausted  ; 
that  it  is  lifting,  pushing,  leading,  and  that  it  is 
greater  than  we  can  conceive.  The  material 
universe  overwhelms  us  as  being  infinite,  but 
the  Power  manifested  in  it  is  mightier  than  it ; 
for  it  is  lifting  it,  unfolding  it,  leading  it  on 
and  on.  So  when  I  see  a  man  like  Alexan- 
der conquering  the  ancient  world  and  crying 
for  more  worlds  to  conquer ;  or  a  man  like 
Napoleon,  with  his  gigantic  designs,  dying 
caged  on  an  island,  but  feeling  in  him  infinite 
capacities ;  when  I  see  Carlyle  complaining, 
dissatisfied,  feeling  that  there  are  possibilities 
in  him  that  there  is  no  place  here  to  unfold, 
—then  I  feel  sure  that  "eye  hath  not  seen, 
nor  ear  heard,  neither  hath  it  entered  into 


ii2  Life's  Dark  Problems 

the  heart  of  man,  the  things  that  God  hath 
prepared." 

Victor  Hugo  recognises  this  limitation,  but 
he  also  has  the  magnificent  outlook : 

Man  is  an  infinite  little  copy  of  God  :  that  is  glory 
enough  for  man.  I  am  a  man,  an  invisible  atom,  a 
drop  in  the  ocean,  a  grain  of  sand  on  the  shore.  Little 
as  I  am,  I  feel  the  God  in  me,  because  I  can  also  bring 
forth  out  of  my  chaos.  I  make  books,  which  are  crea- 
tions. I  feel  in  myself  that  future  life.  I  am  like  a  forest 
which  has  been  more  than  once  cut  down  :  the  new  shoots 
are  stronger  and  livelier  than  ever. 

I  am  rising,  I  know,  toward  the  sky.  The  sunshine  is 
on  my  head.  The  earth  gives  me  its  generous  sap  ;  but 
heaven  lights  me  with  the  reflection  of  unknown  worlds. 
You  say  the  soul  is  nothing  but  the  result  of  bodily 
powers.  Why,  then,  is  my  soul  more  luminous  when  my 
bodily  powers  begin  to  fail  ?  Winter  is  on  my  head,  and 
eternal  spring  in  my  heart.  Then  I  breathe  at  this 
hour  the  fragrance  of  the  lilacs,  the  violets,  and  the  roses, 
as  at  twenty  years  ago.  The  nearer  I  approach  the  end, 
the  plainer  I  hear  around  me  the  symphonies  of  the 
worlds  which  invite  me. 

It  is  marvellous,  yet  simple.  It  is  a  fairy  tale,  and  it 
is  historic.  For  half  a  century  I  have  been  writing  my 
thoughts  in  prose  and  verse,  history,  philosophy,  drama, 
romance,  tradition,  satire,  ode,  and  song.  I  have  tried 
all ;  but  I  feel  I  have  not  said  a  thousandth  part  of  what 
is  in  me.  When  I  go  down  to  the  grave,  I  can  say,  like 
many  others,  I  have  finished  my  day's  work  ;  but  I  can- 
not say  I  have  finished  my  life.  My  day  will  begin  again 
the  next  morning.  The  tomb  is  not  a  blind  alley  :  it  is  a 


Life's  Incompleteness  113 

thoroughfare.     It  closes  on  the  twilight  to  open  on  the 
dawn. 

If  man  is  a  soul,  if  he  is  a  child  of  God,  if 
he  has  in  him  infinite  possibilities,  what  would 
you  have  ?  Is  not  this  age-long  and  universal 
cry  of  dissatisfaction  just  what  we  ought  to 
expect  ? 


CHAPTER  VI 
MORAL  EVIL 

1  WONDER  what  my  readers  would  think 
of  me  if  I  should  begin  by  saying  that  I 
believe  this  to  be  the  best  conceivable  of 
worlds  ?  At  any  rate,  let  us  make  that  sug- 
gestion, and  then  we  will  see  where  we  come 
out. 

It  is  a  sad  scene  that  confronts  us  as  we 
look  over  human  society.  Aside  from  all  other 
things,  it  is  sad  because  of  the  various  and  terri- 
ble manifestations  of  moral  evil, — everywhere 
cruelties,  hatreds,  anger,  envies,  jealousies ; 
people  injuring  each  other;  people  trying  by 
unfair  means  to  overreach  each  other ;  families 
broken,  husbands  and  wives  separate,  fathers 
and  mothers  and  their  children  at  enmity, 
brothers  and  sisters  jealous  or  envious  of  each 
other  or  hating  each  other ;  law  courts  and 
jails  in  every  direction,  and  this  means  crimes, 
assaults,  personal  injury,  robbery,  murder. 
And  then,  every  little  while,  nations  in  bitter 
conflict  with  each  other,  carrying  on  devastat- 

114 


/   Moral  Evil  115 

ing  wars  which  are  in  themselves  the  summing 
up  and  concentration  of  all  conceivable  moral 
evils.  It  is  a  sad  scene.  « 

The  primitive  people  of  the  earth  believed 
in  a  great  many  gods,  some  of  them  good  and 
some  of  them  bad ;  and  they  easily  explained 
this  condition  of  affairs  by  referring  the  bad 
things  to  the  bad  gods  and  the  good  things  to 
the  good  gods.     But  it  was  not  long  before^ 
that  state  of  thought  was  outgrown.     There  is 
one  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world  which 
has   for   its   underlying    assumption    an    idea 
which  would  seem  to  be  able  to  explain  all 
these  contradictory  facts.      Zoroaster  taught 
his  followers  that  there  were  two  gods,  the  god 
of  light  and  of  goodness  and  the  god  of  dark 
ness  and  of  evil,  and  that  these  almost  equally 
matched  gods  were  in  age-long  conflict,  anc 
that  in  this  fact  is  to  be  found  an  adequate  ex 
planation  of  all  the  sins  and  sorrows  of  earth, 
It  is  but  fair  to  Zoroastrianism  to  say  that, 
if  we  assume  the  truth  of  its  creed,  it  would 
explain  the  difficulty,  only  it  would  be  an  as- 
sumption ;  and  the  world  is  getting  tired  of 
assumption,  and  wants  facts,  if  they  can  be  v 
discovered.     There  is  another  thing  to  be  said  ) 
for  Zoroastrianism.    It  was  kinder  than  Christ-  \ 
ianity,  because  its  followers  taught  that  this   j 


n6  Life's  Dark  Problems 

]  conflict  would  some  day  come  to  an  end,  and 
that  even  the  bad  god  himself  would  be  con- 
verted and  redeemed,  and  that  this  world  and 

\all  worlds  would  be  full  of  happiness  and 
peace. 

A  There  is  another  explanation  that  is  worth 
our  noting  for  a  moment  in  passing.  The  old 
Greeks  and  Romans  taught  that  in  the  begin- 
ning of  things  there  was  no  sorrow,  no  sin. 
They  told  us  of  a  Golden  Age ;  but  it  came  to 
an  end,  and,  curiously  enough,  according  to 
one  of  the  great  legends,  it  came  to  an  end 
through  the  agency  of  a  woman,  as  was  sup- 
posed to  be  true  among  the  Hebrews.  Prome- 
theus had  stolen  the  sacred  fire  from  heaven, 
and  given  it  to  man,  so  that  he  might  begin 
the  process  of  civilisation.  Zeus  was  angry, 
whereupon  he  created  Pandora,  a  woman  to 
whom  all  the  gods  had  given  gifts,  whence 
her  name  ;  and  he  brought  her  as  a  present  to 
Epimetheus,  the  brother  of  Prometheus.  Al- 
though Prometheus  had  warned  his  brother 
not  to  accept  any  present  from  Zeus,  he  did 
accept  her ;  and  she  opened  the  fatal  box  in 
which  all  the  evils  that  have  since  afflicted 
the  world  had  been  confined,  shutting  the  lid 
down  just  in  time  to  retain  hope,  the  only 
thing  that  has  never  quite  left  the  human 


Moral  Evil  117 

heart.  This  is  their  explanation  of  the  old 
mystery  as  to  the  beginning  of  moral  evil  in 
the  world. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  Hebrew  and  Christ- 
ian conception ;  for  they  are  substantially  the 
same.  The  Hebrews  assumed, — note  that  I 
use  the  word  assumed, — the  Hebrews  assumed 
that  the  world  was  created  perfect  This 
story  of  the  fall  of  man  was  not  originally  in 
Hebrew  history.  It  came  later  into  their  life 
and  became  part  of  their  religion.  Some  of  its 
features  were  borrowed  probably  from  Baby- 
lonian and  Persian  sources.  The  early  pro- 
phets knew  nothing  about  it ;  but  it  came  at 
last  to  be  a  fundamental  idea  in  the  Hebrew 
religion  and  theology.  God  created  the  worTd  j 
perfect ;  and  then  an  enemy,  a  malign  power,  / 
invaded  this  fair  world,  and  destroyed  its  inV 
nocence,  and  brought  in  its  train  all  concervjr 
able  ills. 

Christianity  adopted  this  belief  of  the  He- 
brews, accepting  their  assumption.     Why  did    / 
they  assume  it  ?   There  is  no  proof  available  in 
the  history  of  the  world  that  any  such  thing  ever 
occurred.      Indeed,  there  is  to-day  demonstra- 
ble proof  to  the  contrary.      Why  did  the  He-  A 
brews  accept  any  such  story  ?    For  the  simple 
reason    that    they    believed    that    God    was    I 


n8  Life's  Dark  Problems 

perfectly  wise  and  perfectly  good,  and  there- 
fore He  must  have  made  the  world  perfectly 
I  good,  to  start  with.  This  is  an  assumption 
)  like  that  of  Plato.  Plato  taught  that  the  per- 
fect figure  was  the  cube  ;  and  so  he  said  the 
universe  was  a  cube.  Why  ?  Did  he  ever 
study  the  universe  to  find  out  ?  Did  he  ever 
collect  any  evidence  that  such  was  the  fact  ? 
It  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him  even 
to  understand  the  scientific  method,  much  less 
to  follow  it.  Because  the  cube,  in  his  opinion, 
was  a  perfect  figure,  therefore  God  must  have 
made  the  universe  a  cube ;  and  because  of  this 
assumption  he  accepted  it  as  a  fact. 

In  precisely  the  same  way  the  Hebrews 
assumed  that  God,  being  wise  and  good,  must 
have  made  the  world  a  perfect  place,  to  start 
with,  and  that  it  must  have  been  some  enemy 
of  His  who  invaded  this  perfect  condition  of 
things,  and  brought  about  the  ruin  of  the 
Creator's  work. 

Now  let  us,  in  the  light  of  what  we  know  to 
be  true  to-day,  look  at  the  facts.  Before  doing 
that,  however,  let  me  say  that  it  has  always 
been  an  amazement  to  me  that  the  brains  and 
heart  and  conscience  of  Christendom  for  so 
many  centuries  could  have  been  paralysed 
into  the  acceptance  of  such  a  theory  as  that 


Moral  Evil  119 

which  lies  at  the  basis  of  our  theological  sys- 
tem. It  has  no  proof.  It  is  unjust,  it  is 
grossly  immoral,  and  yet  Christendom  has  as- 
sumed it,  because  it  has  accepted  the  tradition 
that  it  has  been  divinely  and  authoritatively 
revealed,  and  so  must  be  bowed  to  as  a  mys- 
tery, however  horrible  it  might  seem. 

Before  commenting  on  the  explanation  of 
the  existence  of  moral  evil,  let  us  turn,  and 
consider  a  few  facts, — facts  that  have  been 
scientifically  investigated  and  demonstrated  in 
these  modern  times. 

With  different  modifications  the  theory  of 
evolution  is  now  accepted  by  every  competent 
mind  in  the  civilised  world.  What  does  that 
mean  ?  It  means  that  since  the  far-off  begin- 
ning— I  say  beginning,  because  I  do  not  know 
how  else  to  express  my  thought,  for  we  can 
conceive  of  no  beginning — there  has  been 
gradual  growth,  from  the  simple  to  the  com- 
plex, from  the  lower  to  the  higher,  from  the 
poorer  to  the  relatively  better.  That  is,  the 
universe  has  been  growing.  Everywhere  there 
has  been  struggle,  and  everywhere  those  forms 
which  have  been  best  adapted  to  their  sur- 
roundings have  survived ;  and  under  this  pro- 
cess what  has  taken  place  ?  All  the  best  things 
that  the  world  knows  have  come  into  being. 


120  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Beautiful  grasses  sprang  up.  From  some 
simple  growths  have  been  developed  all  the 
grains  and  cereals  of  the  world.  Under  this 
process  of  struggle  and  survival  the  myriad 
forms  of  insect  life  have  been  developed, 
beauty  beyond  expression,  swiftness,  power, 
life  in  its  various  forms.  Then  this  mysteri- 
ous life  force  has  climbed  up  into  the  birds 
which  fly  in  the  air  and  lodge  in  the  branches 
of  the  trees ;  and  by  this  process  of  struggle 
and  competition,  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
there  have  come  swiftness  of  wing,  beauty  of 
feather,  every  gorgeous  colour,  and  the  mys- 
tery and  marvel  of  song.  All  the  beautiful 
forms  of  bird  life  have  been  developed  through 
this  process.  Among  the  animals,  in  the  same 
way,  power,  strength,  and  wonderful  forms  of 
all  kinds  have  come  to  be. 

Then,  at  some  period  of  which  we  can  only 
guess,  man  appeared,  the  lowest  form  of  man. 
But,  when  man  appeared,  something  very 
striking  and  significant  happened.  What  was 
it?  Conscience  was  born,  a  recognition  of 
the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong.  And 
e  coming  to  birth  of  conscience  our  theology 
as  referred  to  as  "  the  fall "  !  It  is  the  ascent 
an  that  we  must  consider  henceforth,  and 
which  we  must  make  the  corner-stone  of  the 


Moral  Evil  121 

future  theology  of  the  world.     When,  then, 
man  appeared,  conscience  appeared. 

Now  note.  The  old  tradition  said  that  evil 
came  into  the  world  just  at  that  time.  But 
evil  in  one  sense  had  always  been  in  the  world. 
Death  had  always  been  in  the  world.  The 
animals  had  always  been  fighting  and  devour- 
ing each  other.  Envy,  jealousy,  anger,  hatred, 
assault,  murder,  warfare,  all  of  these  things 
that  we  have  come  to  think  of  as  moral  evils, 
were  in  existence  from  the  beginning ;  but  they 
were  not  evil.  Why  ?  Because  conscience 
did  not  exist.  There  was  no  recognition  of 
the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong,  be- 
tween lower  and  higher,  between  worse  and 
better.  And  then  these  things,  in  this  lower 
animal  world,  were  not  evil.  They  were  rela- 
tively good.  Consider  a  moment.  Death 
must  exist,  or  else  these  creatures  that  came 
into  being  must  have  lived  forever.  If  they 
lived  forever,  the  world  would  soon  have  been 
so  full  that  no  more  could  have  come  into  ex- 
istence. That  would  have  meant  that  only  a 
relatively  few  could  have  tasted  the  sweetness 
and  wonder  of  life.  But  if  they  kept  dying 
off  and  new  ones  were  being  born,  then  count- 
less myriads  could  taste  this  wonder,  this 
sweetness,  this  joy,  of  existence. 


122  Life's  Dark  Problems 

But  do  you  think  it  is  an  evil  to  have  them 
devour  each  other  ?  Think  of  the  alternative. 
They  must  either  die  or  live  forever.  If  they 
die  what  we  call  a  natural  death,  the  chances 
are  that  they  would  suffer  many  times  more 
than  by  being  preyed  on  by  their  fellows. 
Sudden  death  is  less  to  be  feared  than  death 
through  lingering  disease  and  starvation. 
Think  what  a  picture  the  latter  would  present. 
It  would  cover  the  world  with  the  putrid,  dis- 
ease-breeding forms  of  myriads  of  creatures. 
Under  the  present  system,  nothing  of  that 
sort  occurs.  And  then,  as  far  as  we  have 
been  able  to  carry  investigations,  we  are  prac- 
tically certain  that  in  almost  all  cases  there  is 
a  natural  anaesthetic  that  precedes  death,  so 
that  suffering  is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

So  in  this  lower  animal  world,  before  man 
appeared,  all  the  feelings,  all  the  actions,  that 
we  have  come  to  think  of  as  evil,  were  in  exist- 
ence ;  but  there  was  no  moral  evil.  There  was 
just  the  kind  of  world,  the  kind  of  life,  which 
was  inevitable  if  creatures  were  to  live  a  limited 

life,  and  then  die.     That  is  all. 
s*~~^ 

f     Now  note  again  that,  when  man  came,  con- 
science came.     What  sort  of  change  did  this 

i  make?     It  meant  that  from  that  point  there 
was  to  be  a  moral  struggle,  that  man  was  to 


Moral  Evil  123 

begin  to  recognise  the  difference  between  the 
lower  and  higher,  between  the  animal  and  the 
human,  between  the  human  and  the  angel,  and 
that  he  was  to  strive  for  mastery  over  the  lower ; 
that  he  was  to  climb  up  into  the  higher  ranges 
of  thought  and  feeling  and  action.  It  meant 
that  moral  perfection  was  to  be  striven  after 
up  the  ages. 

Now  let  us  look  at  man:  Is  there  anything  I 
essentially  evil  in  man  ?  No.  This  whole  idea  — - 
of  essential  evil,  or  evil  as  a  thing,  as  a  substance, 
is  nonsense.  There  is  no  such  thing  in  the 
universe.  There  is  no  original  sin  conceivable  j 
or  possible.  As  you  look  a  man  over  from  head 
to  feet,  there  is  nothing  in  him  that  is  neces- 
sarily wrong ;  not  a  passion,  not  a  desire,  not 
a  faculty,  not  a  power,  that  may  not  be  entirely 
right  and  good.  Man  hungers  for  pleasure. 
Why  ?  Why  not  ?  Is  it  wicked  to  be  happy  ? 
As  to  whether  or  not  it  is  wrong,  depends  en- 
tirely upon  what  this  hunger  leads  him  to  do, 
what  kind  of  pleasure  he  seeks,  whether  he  is 
willing  to  take  it  at  the  expense  of  the  welfare 
of  some  one  else.  A  man  is  ambitious,  desires 
to  make  a  name  for  himself.  What  of  it  ?  Is 
that  wrong?  It  depends  again  entirely  upon 
the  price  he  is  willing  to  pay  for  his  name. 
Ambition  may  be  one  of  the  manliest,  noblest, 


124  Life's  Dark  Problems 

most  splendid  things  in  the  world,  or  it  may  be 
a  danger,  a  most  incalculable  evil.  It  all  de- 
pends. What  is  envy  ?  Envy  is  only  emula- 
tion gone  astray.  You  see  some  one  who  is 
doing  some  fine  thing ;  and  you  emulate  his 
example.  So  far,  it  is  right  and  good  ;  but  you 
can  carry  it  so  far  as  to  make  it  an  evil,  but  in 
itself  it  is  not  necessarily  an  evil.  Hatred ;  is 
that  wrong?  It  depends  on  what  you  hate 
and  what  it  leads  you  to  do.  Anger ;  is  that 
wrong  ?  Again  that  depends  upon  why  and 
with  whom  you  are  angry  and  what  that  anger 
leads  you  to  do.  A  man  kills  another.  What 
is  that  ?  It  may  be  murder,  it  may  be  an  ac- 
cident, it  may  be  heroism.  It  all  depends. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  mere  act  which  is 
necessarily  either  good  or  evil.  So  you  can  go 
through  the  entire  list  of  possible  human  feel- 
ings and  activities,  and  find  that  it  depends  on 
circumstances  whether  they  are  evil  or  good. 
;  'There  are  just  two  possible  ways  by  which  men 
\  can  do  wrong, — -just  two.  You  can  pervert 
^syour  faculties  and  powers,  and  use  them  in 
wrong  ways,  or  you  can  carry  them  to  excess. 
|  You  can  not  possibly  do  wrong  in  any  but  one 
^ojTthese  two  ways. 

So  this  question  of  moral  evil  means  simply 
that  men  have  evolved  from  lower  conditions 


Moral  Evil  125 

/\ 
of  animal  life,  have  started  out  on  this  age-long 

ascent,  climbing  from  brute  to  angel,  led  and 
lifted  by  the  ideal  of  the  divine. 

But  the  scene,  people  say,  is  horrible,  and  the 
actions  are  horrible.  Yes,  many  of  them  are. 
But  let  us  see  if  there  is  any  possible  way  of 
avoiding  this  sort  of  process.  If  men  are  to  live 
at  all,  if  they  are  to  grow  morally  at  all,  is  there 
any  other  kind  of  world  in  which  the  process 
might  be  carried  on  ?  I  have  spent  my  leisure 
a  good  many  times  for  a  good  many  years  in 
trying  to  think  of  conceivable  worlds.  I  am 
going  to  suggest  the  result  of  that  thinking. 

What  possibly  might  God  have  done  ?  He 
might  have  stopped  the  world's  growth  just 
before  conscience  appeared.  What  would  that 
have  meant  ?  It  would  have  meant  the  perpe- 
tuity through  all  time  of  all  these  that  we  have 
come  to  think  as  evil  thoughts  and  evil  things 
and  evil  beings.  No  conscience  being  in  exist- 
ence, of  course  there  would  have  been  no  at- 
tempt to  outgrow  and  leave  behind  these  things 
that  we  have  come  to  think  of  as  evil.  That 
would  have  meant  that  man  should  not  have 
appeared  on  the  earth  at  all. 

There  is  another  conceivable  theory.  God 
might  have  created  us  automatons.  A  skilful 
mechanic  makes  a  watch,  makes  it  so  nearly 


i26  Life's  Dark  Problems 

perfect  that  it  runs  day  by  day  and  week  by 
week  with  the  most  marvellous  accuracy  ;  but 
the  watch  has  nothing  to  do  about  it.  It  is 
simply  the  result  of  forces  of  which  it  is  not 
conscious;  and  it  produces  a  result  which  is 
useful,  but  of  which  it  knows  nothing. 

Thus  God  might  have  created  men  and 
women  so  that  they  would  run  like  machines, 
keep  perfect  time,  and  make  no  mistakes. 
But  should  we  like  to  be  one  of  that  kind  of 
creatures,  even  to  avoid  the  ills  of  the  world  ? 
Should  we  like  to  live  in  a  world  of  that  sort  ? 
There  could  be  no  ideals,  no  efforts,  no  striv- 
ings, no  conquests,  no  victories,  no  high,  fine 
attainments. 

Of  what  other  kind  of  world  can  we  think  ? 
I  can  imagine  that  we  might  be  just  the  kind 
of  creatures  that  we  are,  and  that  God  might 
prevent  the  existence  of  actual  evil  by  interfer- 
ing all  the  time.  Whenever  I  am  inclined  to 
do  something  wrong  in  the  world,  an  angel 
might  touch  me  on  the  shoulder  and  interfere 
with  the  carrying  out  of  my  design.  Every 
time  I  stumbled  and  was  going  to  fall,  he  might 
catch  me  in  his  arms  and  hold  me  up.  Ac- 
tualised  evil  might  conceivably  be  prevented 
in  that  way.  But  do  we  not  see  what  that 
would  mean  ?  It  would  mean  the  negation  of 


Moral  Evil  127 

all  character,  of  all  growth,  of  all  self-control, 
of  all  becoming,  of  all  achievement.  Men  and 
women  living  in  a  world  of  that  sort  would  be 
in  a  perpetual  nursery,  undeveloped,  and  with 
no  possibility  of  development,  unable  to  learn 
anything,  never  becoming  anything.  Would 
you  like  to  have  God  interfere  all  the  time  in 
that  way,  even  to  prevent  you  from  doing 
wrong  and  having  to  pay  the  suffering?  I 
would  not.  I  think  the  mere  naming  of 
theories  like  these  puts  them  out  of  court. 

Now  there  is  another  theory ;  and  this,  I 
think,  is  the  commonest  and  most  popular  of  all. 
Hardly  a  week  goes  by  that  some  one  does 
not  say  to  me  that  he  wonders  that  God  did 
not  make  the  world  after  this  fashion.  That  is, 
God  might  have  made  men  and  women  per- 
fectly wise  and  perfectly  good,  to  start  with ; 
and  then,  of  course,  there  would  have  been  no 
moral  evil  and  no  wrong.  But  if  men  and 
women  had  always  been  perfectly  wise  and 
good,  they  never  would  have  found  it  out, 
they  never  would  have  known  that  they  were 
good.  If  you  never  tasted  anything  but  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  sweet  all  your  life,  you  would  not 
know  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  sweet. 
You  would  not  know  anything  about  it.  The 
basis  of  all  knowledge  of  this  sort  is  compari- 

L-X 


128  Life's  Dark  Problems 

,  son  and  contrast.  So,  really,  this  whole  con- 
ception, when  we  stop  to  think  of  it,  is  absurd. 
There  would  have  been  no  consciousness  of 
battles  fought  and  of  victories  won.  There 
would  have  been  no  sense  of  achievement, 
none  of  the  joys  of  attainment.  If  you  look  at 
it  a  little  closer,  you  will  see  that  it  is  absurd 
in  the  very  terms  in  which  it  is  stated.  I 
make  the  assertion,  and  challenge  reasonable 
contradiction,  that  God  could  not  create  a  per- 
fectly wise  being  at  once.  He  could  not  cre- 
ate a  perfectly  good  being  at  once. 

I  know  that  men  have  assumed  that  there 
are  a  lot  of  angels  in  heaven  who  are  perfectly 
wise  and  perfectly  good.  I  venture  to  doubt 
their  existence.  Nobody  has  ever  seen  them. 
I  believe  the  only  kind  of  angels  in  the  other 
life  are  those  who  have  lived  through  the  kind 
of  life  we  are  living,  and  have  become  angels 
as  the  result  of  moral  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment. What  do  we  mean  by  wisdom  ?  We 
mean  the  result  of  experience.  A  man  makes 
mistakes,  goes  wrong,  and  at  last  learns  ;  and  in 
this  way  he  becomes  wise.  To  say  that  a  man 
is  wise  who  has  not  been  through  any  experi- 
ence of  that  sort  is  to  use  a  word  without  attach- 
ing to  it  any  rational  meaning,  because  wisdom 
means  the  summed-up  results  of  experience. 


Moral  Evil  129 

Precisely  a  similar  thing  is  true  of  goodness. 
To  say  that  a  man  is  good  means  that  he  has 
wrought  out  goodness  as  the  result  of  trying, 
of  failure,  of  falling  and  of  rising  again.  And 
neither  he  nor  we  could  know  that  he  was 
good  unless  through  experience  of  the  oppo- 
site. I  venture  to  say  that  this  conception  of 
the  possibility  of  a  perfect  world  from  the 
start  is  absurd  on  the  face  of  it,  is  an  impossi- 
ble thing  in  the  very  statement  of  its  terms. 

Can  we  think  of  any  other  kind  of  world  ?  I 
cannot.  And  now  what  is  the  outcome  ?  It 
means,  in  my  judgment,  that  just  this  kind  of 
world  we  are  in  here,  where  there  is  bitterness 
and  heartache,  and  envy  and  jealousy,  and  strife 
and  falsehood,  and  robbery  and  wrong  of  every 
kind,  is  the  best  conceivable  world.  If  we 
were  to  stay  just  where  we  are,  no.  But  what 
does  this  human  life  mean  ?  It  means  a  field 
for  struggle,  a  moral  and  spiritual  gymnasium 
through  which  we  are  to  be  developed  and 
trained.  Out  of  this  experience  and  training 
look  back  and  see  what  magnificent  souls  have 
come.  What  tender,  true,  and  devoted  women  ! 
What  noble,  sagacious,  and  magnificent  men  ! 
And  has  it  not  been  worth  while,  when  you  re- 
member that  this  is  not  a  permanent  condition 


as  touching  any  one  individual  soul  ?     Evil 


130  Life's  Dark  Problems 

would  indeed  be  inexplicable,  would  be  with- 
out any  defence  in  the  court  of  good  morals, 
j  if  it  were  to  be  permanent,  so  far  as  any  one 
.soul  or  any  one  group  of  souls  is  concerned. 

If  there  are  to  be  millions  of  people  who  are 
to  go  to  hell  and  never  escape  from  it,  then 
there  is  no  possible  way  of  justifying  the  uni- 
verse and  of  pleading  successfully  for  God.  If 
any  one  soul,  the  poorest  and  meanest  that 
has  ever  lived,  is  to  go  to  hell  and  stay  there 
forever,  then  there  is  no  way  of  defending 
God  or  of  justifying  the  universe.  But  evil 
may  be  eternal  for  all  I  know.  It  would  not 
trouble  me  if  I  believed  it.  But  if  it  is  only 
a  condition, — a  process  through  which  souls 
pass  on  a  journey  to  the  highest,  though  there 
may  be  in  some  world,  in  some  part  of  space, 
this  condition  of  evil  and  struggling  and  de- 
velopment always  existing  ;  if, — and  nobody 
can  deny  this  if;  they  can  doubt  it  if  they 
please,  but,  until  they  can  prove  that  it  is  not 
true,  they  can  bring  no  lasting  charge  against 
the  justice  of  God, — if  evil  is  only  a  process ; 
if  this  life  is  only  a  school ;  if  we  are  learning 
how  to  live  here  ;  if  the  thing  going  on  is  what 
Browning  refers  to  as  "  the  culture  of  a  soul," — 
then  I  believe  that  the  proposition  is  quite  de- 
fensible that  this  is  the  best  conceivable  of 


Moral  Evil  is1 

worlds.  If  every  soul  is  to  learn  some  time 
what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  is  to  learn  to 
choose  the  right  and  turn  away  from  the 
wrong  because  it  means  life  and  welfare  and 
happiness  for  all  souls  ;  if,  I  say,  every  indi-^ 
vidual  is  to  learn  that  lesson  some  day, — then 
may  not  the  process  be  amply  and  grandly 
justified  ?  We  have  come  from  the  lower 
forms  of  life.  We  reached  the  point  where 
conscience  was  born,  and  now  we  are  fighting 
our  way  through  and  up,  and  leaving  behind 
us  the  passions  of  the  animals  below  us.  We 
are  climbing  up  into  self-control,  climbing  up 
into  brain  and  heart  and  soul,  climbing  up  into 
the  life  of  children  of  God. 

I  do  not  know  of  any  other  kind  of  world 
in  which  moral  training  would  be  possible. 
Moral  training  means  freedom,  the  ability  to 
choose  evil  or  choose  good.  It  means  learn- 
ing evil  by  knowing  the  results  of  it ;  it  means 
learning  good  by  knowing  the  results  of  that  ;- 
and  it  means  that  ultimately  every  man  will 
know  that  it  is  better  to  be  right,  and  will 
freely  choose  it.  And  so  he  will  come  to  him- 
self as  a  developed  and  conscious  child  of 
God. 

If  we  are  to  live  at  all,  and  if  we  are  to  pass 
through  the  experience  of  evil  on  the  way  to 


132  Life's  Dark  Problems 

moral  goodness,  then  I  cannot  think  of  any 
better  field  for  the  training  and  achievement. 

If  these  things  are  so, — and  I  believe  they 
are  scientifically  demonstrable  as  true, — then 
the  temporary  existence  of  moral  evil  as  a 
phase  in  the  development  of  each  individual 
soul  ceases  to  be  one  of  life's  dark  problems ; 
and  it  is  perfectly  consistent  with  our  loving 
trust  in  the  wisdom  and  the  goodness  of  our 
Father,  God. 


CHAPTER   VII 
DEATH 

I  TAKE  it  there  is  no  other  fact  in  the  world 
that  has  made  it  harder  for  people  to  be- 
lieve in  the  goodness  of  God  than  this  of  death. 
There  are  certain  ideas  which  have  come 
down  to  us  from  the  past,  which  we  have  re- 
ceived as  unquestioned  traditions,  which  have 
become  so  thoroughly  part  of  us  that  even 
after  we  have  intellectually  repudiated  them 
we  instinctively  assume  their  truth.  Theology 
has  taught  us  from  the  beginning  of  Christian 
history  that  death  is  the  result  of  human  sin, 
that  it  came  into  the  world  on  account  of 
human  sin,  on  account  of  man's  disobedience 
to  the  command  of  God.  We  instinctively 
think  of  it  as  a  token  of  God's  anger.  Hav- 
ing believed  that  God  made  the  world  perfect 
in  the  first  place,  men  came  to  regard  death 
as  the  result  of  an  invasion  of  this  beautiful 
world  of  ours  by  some  malign  power  from 
without,  as  the  work  of  an  enemy  of  God  and 
of  man. 

133 


134  Life's  Dark  Problems 

If  possible  for  a  while  let  us  put  all  these 
ideas  aside.  We  all  know  that  no  one  of 
them  is  true.  We  know  that  there  never  has 
been  a  fall  of  man ;  and  so  death  is  not  the 
result  of  that  which  never  took  place.  We 
know  it  is  not  a  consequence  of  human  sin. 
We  know  it  was  not  brought  into  this  world 
by  any  enemy  of  God  or  man  from  outside. 
It  is  settled  scientifically,  demonstrated  be- 
yond any  rational  question,  that,  for  worse  or 
for  better,  death  is  a  part  of  the  universal  and 
eternal  order  of  the  world.  It  was  intended 
as  much  as  life  was  intended ;  and,  if  we  can 
find  an  explanation  for  it  at  all,  we  must  find 
it  on  the  basis  of  a  recognition  of  this  fact. 

Is  there  any  way,  then,  by  which  we  can 
reconcile  the  existence  of  death  with  a  loving 
belief  in  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God? 
That  is  the  problem  which  we  are  now  to 
consider. 

At  the  outset  we  must  try  to  separate  the 
fact  of  death  from  certain  things  which  are  not 
essential  to  it,  which  accompany  it,  which  are 
associated  with  it  in  our  minds,  but  which  are 
no  necessary  part  of  the  problem  which  we 
wish  to  solve.  To  illustrate,  suppose  an  archi- 
tect should  make  careful  plans  for  the  con- 
struction of  a  building.  He  puts  these  plans 


Death  135 

into  the  hands  of  workmen,  who  go  on  and 
violate  some  of  the  essential  conditions  of  the 
plans  in  various  places  ;  and  the  result  is  that 
the  work  is  disfigured,  that  perhaps  the  build- 
ing falls  before  it  is  half  completed,  and  buries 
some  of  the  workmen  in  the  ruins.  You  will 
say,  of  course,  that  the  architect  is  not  to  be 
held  responsible  for  these  results  which  came 
through  the  breaking  of  his  plans.  Now,  in 
order  to  find  that  for  which  God  may  justly 
be  held  responsible,  we  must  eliminate  from 
the  problem  those  things  which  are  brought 
about  by  our  own  ignorance,  passion,  wilful- 
ness,  our  own  breaking  of  the  laws  of  God. 
Let  us  try,  then,  and  simplify  the  problem  just 
as  far  as  we  may,  and  get  at  that  which  is 
essential  in  the  fact  of  death. 

Let  us  leave  aside,  then,  most  of  the  pre- 
mature deaths  of  the  world.  Some  of  the 
saddest  experiences  of  life  grow  out  of  the 
deaths  of  children.  The  death-rate  in  some 
of  the  great  cities  of  the  world  is  simply  ap- 
palling ;  and  I  find  myself  now  and  then  won- 
dering why  the  feet  of  the  little  ones  cross  the 
threshold  at  all,  if  they  are  to  be  snatched 
away  so  soon.  And  yet,  when  we  look  the 
problem  fairly  in  the  face,  we  are  compelled 
to  admit  that  in  nearly  all  cases  these  pre- 


•> 


Cj 

136  Life's  Dark  Problems 

mature  deaths  are  the  fault  of  men  and  women 
themselves.  ^  They  are  no  necessary  part  of 
the  divine  order,  are  not  to  be  charged  as  in- 
dictments against  the  wisdom  or  the  goodness 
of  Him  who  governs  the  world.  Careless- 
ness, ignorance,  pride,  a  hundred  different 
causes,  are  at  work  to  take  the  little  ones  out 
of  our  arms.  Until  we  are  quite  sure  that 
human  responsibility  is  not  at  fault,  let  us  not 
dare  to  charge  these  dark  facts  against  the 
beneficence  of  the  divine  order. 

There  is  another  thing  we  must  put  aside. 
We  make  very  little  distinction  between  the 
fact  of  death  and  the  pains,  the  diseases,  the 
sorrows,  that  precede  and  lead  to  death.  Here, 
again,  in  almost  all  cases,  we  ourselves  are  re- 
sponsible. It  is  the  fact  of  death  alone,  stripped 
of  accretions,  and  incidents,  that  God  is  respon- 
sible for.  Most  of  our  diseases  are  prevent- 
able. Some  of  them  of  course  we  inherit. 
But  our  fathers,  our  ancestors,  through  ignor- 
ance, through  passion,  in  one  way  or  another, 
were  responsible,  if  we  are  not ;  and  we  are 
responsible  if  we  have  not  done  all  that  we 
can  to  neutralise  the  evil  results  of  the  inherit- 
ances that  have  come  to  us.  But  most  of  the 
pains  and  diseases  of  the  world  that  precede 
death  are  preventable.  We  are  proving,  under 


Death  137 

the  guidance  of  our  wiser  physicians,  that  the 
number  of  these  and  their  virulence  can  be 
lessened  ;  and  we  know  that  most  of  them  may 
be  avoided.  Let  us  not,  then,  aggravate  the 
charge  which  we  make  against  the  goodness 
of  God  by  holding  Him  responsible  for  those 
things  which  we  ourselves  have  brought  about. 
How  many  times  is  it  true,  as  we  look  back ! 
We  are  ill.  We  know  what  did  it.  The 
chances  are  that,  when  we  get  well,  we  shall 
repeat  the  offence, — in  eating  and  drinking, 
the  lack  of  proper  care,  passionate  self-indulg- 
ence in  one  direction  or  another.  We  know 
how  many  times  we  are  responsible  for  these 
physical  ailments  that  we  roll  up  as  a  huge 
indictment  against  the  wisdom  of  Him  who 
governs  the  affairs  of  men. 

Then  there  is  another  thing  connected  with 
the  fact  of  death  which  is  purely  a  bit  of  curi- 
ous imagination.  I  have  known  large  numbers 
of  people  who,  as  they  thought  of  death,  were 
burdened  with  the  idea  of  the  grave,  of  burial, 
of  the  disposition  of  the  physical  body.  But  I 
am  not  going  to  be  buried.  Why  should  I  worry 
about  that  ?  Why  should  it  trouble  me  any 
more  than  the  disposition  that  shall  be  made 
of  a  suit  of  clothes  which  I  wore  last  year  ?  I 
am  getting  rid  of  certain  parts  of  this  physical 


138  Life's  Dark  Problems 

body  of  mine  every  day.  Every  time  I  breathe, 
every  time  I  move,  a  part  of  the  body  takes  its 
place  with  the  elements  out  of  which  it  came. 
I  do  not  worry  about  these.  Why  should  I 
worry  about  what  becomes  of  the  whole  of  it, 
when  I  am  through  ?  We  are  not  so  wise  as 
Socrates.  When  his  disciples  were  talking  to 
him  just  before  he  drank  the  hemlock,  one  of 
them  asked  him  how  he  would  like  to  be 
buried ;  and  he  answered,  with  that  pathetic 
humour  which  even  the  presence  of  death  could 
not  dismay,  that  they  might  bury  him  any  way 
they  pleased  if  they  could  catch  him ;  but  he 
did  not  expect  to  be  there. 

Then  there  is  another  thing  that  uselessly 
troubles  us.  Literature  has  done  its  best  to 
create  imaginary  horrors  connected  with  death. 
Look  at  Milton's  picture  of  death  : 

"  The  other  shape — 

If  shape  it  might  be  called  that  shape  had  none 
Distinguishable  in  member,  joint,  or  limb, 
Or  substance  might  be  called  that  shadow  seemed, 
For  each  seemed  either — black  it  stood  as  night, 
Fierce  as  ten  furies,  terrible  as  hell, 
And  shook  a  dreadful  dart." 

He  refers  to  death  again  as  that  "grisly  ter- 
ror." We  have  figured  it  to  the  imagination 
by  skull  and  cross-bones.  The  Greeks  had  a 


Death  139 

lovelier  picture.  They  sometimes  referred  to 
death  as  a  beautiful  youth  holding  in  his  hand 
an  inverted  torch.  But  we  by  sculpture,  by 
painting,  by  rhetoric,  as  expressed  in  prose  and 
verse,  have  created  horrible  imaginations  as 
though  they  were  real  entities,  and  have  la- 
belled them  Death,  and  so  made  it  a  more 
terrible  thing  than  otherwise  it  could  possibly 
have  been. 

Most  of  us  not  only  fear  dying,  but  we  have 
created  such  horrible  things  to  follow  after 
death  that  it  is  not  the  process  so  much  that 
we  shrink  from  as  what  we  are  to  face  when  we 
have  emerged  from  the  shadow.  Hamlet  has 
expressed  these  familiar  thoughts : 

"  To  die  :  to  sleep,— 
No  more  :  and,  by  a  sleep,  to  say  we  end 
The  heartache,  and  the  thousand  natural  shocks 
That  flesh  is  heir  to, — 't  is  a  consummation 
Devoutly  to  be  wished.     To  die,  to  sleep  : 
To  sleep  :  perchance,  to  dream  :  ay,  there 's  the  rub; 
For  in  that  sleep  of  death  what  dreams  may  come, 
When  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil, 
Must  give  us  pause." 

It  is  the  dread  of  something  after  death  that 

makes  him  again  speak  of  that  "  undiscovered 

country  from  whose  bourne  no  traveller  re- 

>(  turns."     It  is  this  that  makes  "  cowards  of  us 


Life's  Dark  Problems 


all."  It  is  not  conscience  only  that  makes 
cowards  of  us,  as  I  think.  Imagination  has 
created  conditions  and  possible  worlds  for  a  be- 
lief in  which  there  are  no  facts,  no  realities,  no 
proofs.  How  the  preachers  from  Jonathan 
Edwards  to  Spurgeon  and  men  since  their 
day  have  revelled  in  piling  up  all  the  conceiva- 
ble horrors  that  await  the  soul  that  has  not 
accepted  the  theological  ideas  of  the  preacher  ! 
And  so  they  have  made  death  something  en- 
tirely different  from  the  simple  fact,  which  is 
the  only  part  of  it  which  is  the  work  of 
God. 

What  is  death  ?  It  is  going  to  sleep.  If  a 
person  leads  a  normal  and  healthful  life,  such 
a  life  as  my  friend  and  comrade,  Robert  Coll- 
yer,  who,  past  eighty,  has  never  missed  an  en- 
gagement on  account  of  illness,  who,  past 
eighty,  has  never  taken  a  meal  in  bed  on  ac- 
count of  illness,  who,  past  eighty,  has  never 
gone  without  a  meal  since  he  was  born  on 
account  of  illness,  —  if  we  could  live  lives  like 
this,  when  we  got  through  death  would  be 
nothing  but  going  to  sleep.  That  is  the  part 
of  it  which  God  has  appointed,  and  for  which 
alone  he  can  be  justly  held  accountable.  Every 
physician  knows  and  can  tell  you  that  the 
normal  life,  when  it  comes  to  an  end,  has  little 


Death 

pain  or  suffering  to  fear  connected  with  the 
fact  of  dying.  There  is  a  natural  anaesthesia 
connected  with  it  and  preceding  it.  I  suppose 
there  are  few  cases  where  a  person  knows 
when  he  dies,  any  more  than  he  knows  just 
the  moment  when  he  falls  asleep.  It  is  the 
end  of  an  earthly  life,  that  is  all ;  and  because 
God  puts  an  end  to  it,  to  this  period  of  exist- 
ence, are  we  not  to  be  grateful  to  Him  for 
the  fact  of  life  ?  We  have  lived,  say,  twenty, 
thirty,  forty,  fifty,  sixty,  seventy,  eighty  years. 
We  have  looked  at  the  beauties  of  the  sunrise 
and  sunset,  we  have  heard  the  lapping  of  the 
waves  on  the  ocean  shore,  we  have  listened 
to  the  winds  in  the  trees,  we  have  rejoiced  in 
the  morning  songs  of  birds,  we  have  looked 
into  the  faces  of  our  friends,  we  have  known 
something  of  the  ecstasy  of  love,  we  have  had 
the  children  round  our  feet,  we  have  seen  all 
the  wonders  of  the  on-goings  of  the  world, — 
we  have  lived.  Is  life  not  good,  not  a  gift  for 
which  we  should  be  thankful,  because  there 
comes  a  period  terminating  it  after  a  while  ? 
The  positive  gift  was  a  gift  of  good.  Let  us 
never  forget  that ;  and  it  is  not  less  good  be- 
cause we  may  not  keep  it  in  perpetuity. 

The   only  thing,    then,    about   the   fact   of 
death   for  which  God   is   responsible   is  just 


142  Life's  Dark  Problems 

going  to  sleep,  passing  through  the  door  when 
we  get  through  with  this  phase  of  our  earthly 
existence.  "He  giveth  His  beloved  sleep." 

Now  let  us  turn  the  matter  quite  round.  If 
we  are  not  to  live  here  forever,  we  must  die. 
What  are  the  alternatives  ?  If  we  are  not  to 
die,  then  we  are  to  continue  here  in  this  world. 
Just  as  I  have  tried  over  and  over  again  to 
think  out  different  possible  worlds,  better  or 
worse  than  the  present  one,  so  I  have  tried 
over  and  over  again,  with  all  the  intellectual 
keenness  I  possess,  to  think  of  the  alternatives 
to  dying.  I  have  tried  to  decide  in  my  own 
mind  whether  they  were  desirable,  whether  I 
would  have  death  eliminated  if  I  could.  Let  us 
now  for  a  little  consider  some  of  these  possi- 
bilities. Let  us  see  if  they  seem  satisfactory. 

Would  you  like  to  live  here  indefinitely  if 
you  could  not  keep  your  friends  with  you  ? 
Would  you  be  willing  to  take  the  gift  of  an 
earthly  immortality,  just  you  alone  ?  I  would 
not.  I  cannot  conceive  that  you  would.  Love, 
friendship,  the  companionship  of  those  who 
are  dear  to  me,  are  so  much  to  me  that  I  would 
rather  have  them  with  me  anywhere,  in  any 
world,  in  the  heavens  above  or  in  the  deeps 
below,  than  to  have  any  paradise  I  can  im- 
agine all  alone  by  myself.  I  wish,  then,  to 


Death  143 

share  the  fate,  living  or  dying,  of  the  people  I 
care  for. 

There  is  another  possibility.     Would  you 
be  willing  to  take  the  gift  of  immortal  life 
without  the  gift  of  immortal  youth  along  with 
it  ?     Would  you  be  willing  to  continue  to  grow 
older  and  older  and  older,  and  still  stay  here  ? 
Again,  I  would  not.     I  love  life,   I  love  my 
work,  I  love  my  friends,  I  love  all  the  beauty 
and  glory  of  the  world.     I  would  like,   if  I J 
could  have  my  way,  to  stay  here  as  long  as  I  \ 
am  in  good  physical  and  mental  condition,  as  \ 
long  as   I  can   think  and  be  interested   and  ] 
active  and  enjoy.     But  I  can  imagine  a  time  ( 
coming  when    I    might   pray  to  be   released 
from  the  increasing  burdens  and  infirmities  of 
life.     I  do  not  want  to  continue  to  exist  when 
I  am  through  living.     I  think,  then,  we  may 
leave  that  consideration  one  side. 

There  is  another  one.  Suppose  we  could 
all  live  until  we  were  thirty  or  forty,  until  the 
children  were  fairly  grown  up  around  us,  and 
then  all  stop  and  stay  here  forever  after, — 
would  you  like  that?  Before  you  decide, 
think  what  it  would  mean.  The  world  is  not 
very  large.  By  and  by  there  would  be  just  as 
many  people  as  there  would  be  room  for. 
There  would  be  as  many  as  the  resources  of 


144  Life's  Dark  Problems 

the  world  could  comfortably  support.  What 
would  that  mean  ?  Why,  of  course  it  would 
mean  no  more  children,  no  more  of  the  de- 
lights of  family  life,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
the  word.  The  world  would  be  full.  Then 
what  ?  Years  and  years  would  pass,  hundreds 
of  years,  thousands  of  years,  and  no  new  faces, 
no  new  experiences,  no  new  associations  !  I 
am  afraid  it  would  become  monotonous  and 
tiresome.  I  am  afraid  that  we  should  look  at 
all  the  great  and  bright  worlds  around  us,  and 
wonder  whether  we  had  not  made  an  unfor- 
tunate choice  when  we  decided  that  we  would 
cast  our  lot  indefinitely  with  this  little  planet. 
This  idea  should  be  emphasised  by  another 
consideration.  Most  people  get  tired  of  think- 
ing and  studying  after  a  while.  The  capacity 
of  the  brain  seems  to  be  limited  in  this  direc- 
tion ;  and  so  we  should  stop  growing,  stop 
advancing,  stop  progressing,  think  the  same 
things  over  and  over,  read  the  same  things 
over  and  over,  and  after  a  few  thousand  years 
had  gone  by  it  seems  to  me  that  we  should 
wish  we  might  change  our  environment,  that 
we  might  have  new  stimuli,  that  we  might 
enter  into  other  associations.  I  imagine  that 
we  might  come  to  feel  like  persons  cast  away 
on  an  island, — an  island,  let  us  say,  in  the 


Death  145 

tropics,  naturally  productive,  the  scenery  beau- 
tiful. The  people  find  themselves  fortunate 
in  their  home  ;  but  no  ship  comes  to  touch 
their  port,  no  ship  goes  out  bearing  any  one  to 
some  other  harbour,  and  the  years  go  by.  Now 
and  then  a  vessel  appears  on  the  horizon,  and 
passes  away,  coming  from  where,  going  to 
where,  they  can  only  guess.  Under  those  con- 
ditions would  there  not  grow  up  impatience 
of  the  confinement  that  made  it  impossible  for 
the  people  to  explore  some  other  region  of  the 
world  ?  Would  they  not  grow  tired  even  of 
the  beauty,  the  monotony,  of  the  flowers  and 
song-birds  and  the  music  of  the  waves  on  the 
shore?  We  are  on  this  little  island  world. 
Up  to  the  present  time,  people  have  constantly 
been  leaving  it,  sailing  out  into  the  unknown. 
We  wonder  where  they  are  going.  But  sup- 
pose we  should  all  stop  here?  After  some 
hundreds  or  thousands  of  years  I  imagine  we 
should  look  at  the  planets  sailing  through  the 
blue  as  though  they  were  ships  from  some  dis- 
tant port,  tending  to  some  unknown  harbour, 
and  wonder  what  they  meant,  whether  they 
were  inhabited  by  happier  beings  than  we. 
And  I  imagine  that  after  a  while  we  should 
long  to  break  away,  to  explore  those  unknown 
regions  of  the  universe.  I  think  we  should  get 


146  Life's  Dark  Problems 

tired  of  each  other,  tired  of  the  scenery,  tired 
of  the  experiences,  and  long  to  sail  out  into 
some  unknown  sea. 

Then  there  is  another  consideration.  We 
think  that  death  stands  in  the  way  of  human 
happiness.  Did  you  ever  stop  to  think  that 
death  is  the  means  of  conferring  happiness 
upon  countless  millions  more  than  would  be 
able  to  taste  it  did  not  death  exist?  Here  are 
a  few  people  on  the  earth.  We  live  here  from 
twenty  to  fifty  or  more  years,  and  pass  away, 
making  way  for  others  to  come ;  and  so  the 
generations  succeed  each  other.  The  little 
ones  come,  as  we  vacate  our  places  to  make 
room  for  them  ;  and  so  countless  myriads  are 
born  to  see  the  wonder  and  taste  the  beauty 
and  glory  of  life  who  never  could  enter  on 
or  gain  a  glimpse  of  these  things  but  for  the 
fact  of  death. 

There  is  another  consideration  ;  for  I  wish 
to  exhaust,  so  far  as  I  can,  all  the  possibilities 
in  this  direction.  The  world  has  been  growing ; 
and  you  have  noticed,  if  you  have  studied  his- 
tory to  any  purpose,  that  there  are  times  when 
some  man  or  some  scheme  or  thought  has  so 
dominated  the  world  as  to  hinder  its  advance 
for  generations.  Take,  for  example,  as  an  illus- 
tration, the  theology  of  Augustine,  re-created 


Death  147 

by  John  Calvin,  which  has  dominated  the 
world  so  many  dreary  years.  Suppose  that 
Augustine  had  kept  on  living,  and  that  he  and 
Calvin  together  had  combined  to  exalt  their 
opinions  through  their  personal  influence, — 
think  how  they  might  have  held  the  world 
back  for  centuries  !  Ut  is  hard  enough  for  us 
now  to  break  away  from  an  intellectual  system 
and  to  free  ourselves  from  the  domination  of 
ideas!)  Suppose  there  were  added  to  these  the 
domination  of  the  personalities  of  the  men  who 
have  lived  in  the  past  \  What  if  we  had  all 
our  Caesars  in  the  world  still,  with  all  the  ac- 
cumulation of  power  and  tyranny  they  might 
have  gained,  along  with  what  we  have  had 
since  they  passed  away  I  Suppose  we  still 
had  our  Tamerlanes,  our  Napoleons  I  One  of 
the  greatest  agencies  in  the  growth  and 
gress  of  the  world  is  this  fact  of  death.  Death 
unclogs  the  wheels  of  the  world's  chariot  of 
advance,  and  sets  people  free,  and  gives  new 
views  and  conceptions  of  things  which  lift  up 
and  lead  on  the  civilisation  of  the  world.  I 
cannot  think  of  any  condition  of  things  here  in 
this  world,  with  death  eliminated,  which  would 
seem  to  me  either  hopeful  or  permanently 
good. 

There  is  another  way  of  looking  at  it.     We 


148  Life's  Dark  Problems 

have  just  noted  that  death  is  a  condition  of 
progress.  This  is  truer  than  we  think.  We 
are  all  evolutionists  now.  What  does  that  im- 
ply ?  Go  back  as  far  as  you  can  and  down  to 
the  early  condition  of  things,  and  you  will 
find  that  growth  everywhere  means  the  dying 
out  of  certain  types  and  forms  and  their  being 
succeeded  by  other  higher,  nobler,  more  ad- 
vanced types  and  forms.  So  from  the  very 
beginning  death  has  been  a  condition  of 
growth.  The  oldest  and  lowest  forms  have 
made  way  for  the  next  higher ;  and  so  the 
world  has  gone  on. 

New  being  is  from  being  ceased; 

No  life  is  but  by  death; 
Something  's  expiring  everywhere 

To  give  some  other  breath. 

There  's  not  a  flower  that  glads  the  spring 

But  blooms  upon  the  grave 
Of  its  dead  parent  seed  o'er  which 

Its  forms  of  beauty  wave. 

The  oak  that  like  an  ancient  tower 

Stands  massive  on  the  heath 
Looks  out  upon  a  living  world, 

But  strikes  its  roots  in  death. 

The  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills 

Clip  the  sweet  herbs  that  grow 
Rank  from  the  soil  enriched  by  herds 

Sleeping  long  years  below. 


Death  H9 

To- day  is  but  a  structure  built 

Upon  dead  yesterday; 
And  Progress  hews  her  temple  stones 

From  wrecks  of  old  decay. 

Then  mourn  not  death;    't  is  but  a  stair 

Built  with  divinest  art, 
Up  which  the  deathless  footsteps  climb 

Of  loved  ones  who  depart. 

What  has  just  been  said  does  not  involve 
the  continuance  of  personality.  One  type 
gives  way  to  a  new  type  ;  but,  when  we  come 
to  the  problem  as  it  touches  us,  a  new  element 
is  added,  a  new  question  arises.  We  have 
learned  to  love,  to  dream,  to  hope  ;  and  so  we 
are  not  contented  with  the  idea  that,  as  lower 
forms  have  given  way  to  us,  now  we  should 
give  way  to  still  higher  forms  of  which  we  are 
to  know  nothing.  Whether  rightly  or  wrongly, 
whether  imaginary  on  our  part  or  implanted 
by  God  Himself,  there  is  in  our  hearts  a  dream 
of  personal  continuance,  a  longing  to  find  the 
loved  ones  who  have  preceded  us,  to  create 
anew  the  deathless  circles  in  some  better  and 
higher  world.  Is  there  any  reason  for  a  hope 
like  that  ?  As  a  hint  in  that  direction  marvel- 
lously expressed,  take  this  sonnet  by  Blanco 
White,  one  of  the  few  exquisite  sonnets  of  the 
world : 


15°  Life's  Dark  Problems 

"  Mysterious  night !  when  our  first  parent  knew 
Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name, 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame, 

This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue  ? 

Yet  'neath  a  curtain  of  translucent  dew, 

Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 
Hesperus,  with  the  host  of  heaven,  came, 

And,  lo  !  creation  widened  in  man's  view. 

Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  con- 
cealed 

Within  thy  beams,  O  sun  !  or  who  could  find, 
Whilst  fly  and  leaf  and  insect  stood  revealed, 

That  to  such  countless  orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind  ? 
Why  do  we,  then,  shun  death  with  anxious  strife  ? 
If  light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  life  ?  " 

You  see  the  suggestion.  So  long  as  the  sun 
shines,  all  we  know  is  this  little  world.  When 
the  sun  sets,  millions  of  other  worlds  leap  into 
view.  And  so  the  poet  asks  whether  life  has 
not  concealed  as  much  as  light  has. 

Lowell  has  a  wonderful  little  poem  on  some 
gold-fish  in  a  glass  globe.  They  float  around 
and  see  the  shadows  cast  on  their  little  world. 
If  they  had  intelligence  enough,  they  might 
wonder  what  it  meant.  They  would  perhaps 
think,  as  we  do,  that  the  only  real  world  is  the 
globe  in  which  they  live,  and  that  what  they 
saw  were  distorted  images  of  nobody  knew 
what,  but  of  no  real  significance. 

Some  insect  might  climb  up  to  the  edge, 


Death  151 

and  see  beyond  the  limit  of  his  little  pool.  It 
might  see  a  chrysalis  burst  open,  and  might 
feel  that  there  was  something  outside,  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  little  world  it  knew.  We  are 
like  the  little  goldfish  in  the  globe.  We  are 
in  our  little  pool.  Distorted  images  are  re- 
flected now  and  then  across  our  vision.  Friend 
after  friend  bursts  open  the  chrysalis,  and  dis- 
appears. We  dream,  we  wonder,  we  hope. 
Some  of  us  try  to  study  and  find  out ;  some  of 
us  blindly  accept  traditions,  in  this  direction  or 
that,  which  have  come  down  to  us  from  other 
people  who  have  tried  to  find  out  in  the  past ; 
but  none  of  us  is  sure  that  this  is  the  end. 

And  note,  if  this  world  is  not  all,  if  death  is 
only  graduating  here  and  beginning  the  next 
stage  of  life  somewhere  else,  if  this  is  not  say- 
ing farewell  to  all  the  people  we  love,  why, 
then,  death  may  not  be  one  of  the  dark  pro- 
blems of  life,  but  on  the  other  hand  it  may  be 
the  very  sweetest  and  divinest  of  all  conceiv- 
able gifts  of  God. 

Before  we  have  a  right  to  charge  death  as  a 
fact  against  the  goodness  of  God,  we  are  under 
obligation  to  prove  that  it  does  not  mean  any- 
thing except  the  dust.  So  long  as  there  is  a 
reasonable  doubt  that  death  is  the  end  of  all, 
so  long  we  have  no  right  to  charge  it  as  a  part 


152  Life's  Dark  Problems 

of  an  indictment  of  the  goodness  of  God.  If 
death  does  mean  simply  that  the  angel  of  God 
comes  and  opens  the  gate  and  lets  us  out  into 
a  larger  and  grander  world,  if  through  death 
we  graduate  from  this  primary  school  and  en- 
~ter  the  next  higher  grade^why,  then,  instead 
of  its  being  a  difficult  problem,  it  is  one  of  the 
greatest  possible  proofs  of  the  goodness  of  our 
Father. 

And  now,  at  the  end,  let  us  read  a  little 
poem  called  "  A  Morning  Thought,"  by  E.  R. 
Sill,  a  man  who  died  young,  with  his  life-work 
only  begun  : 

"  What  if  some  morning,  when  the  stars  were  paling 
And  the  dawn  widened  and  the  east  was  clear, 

Strange  peace  and  rest  fell  on  me  from  the  presence 
Of  a  benignant  spirit  standing  near; 

"  And  I  should  tell  him,  as  he  stood  beside  me: 

'  This  is  our  earth, — most  friendly  earth  and  fair; 

Daily  its  sea  and  shore,  through  sun  and  shadow, 
Faithful  it  turns,  wrapped  in  its  azure  air. 

"  '  There  is  blest  living  here,  loving  and  serving, 
And  quest  of  truth,  and  serene  friendship  dear; 

But  stay  not,  spirit  !     Earth  has  one  destroyer; 

His  name  is  Death.     Flee,  lest  he  find  thee  here  ! ' 

"  And  what  if  then,  while  the  still  morning  brightened, 
And  freshened  in  the  elm  the  summer's  breath, 

Should  gravely  smile  on  me  the  angel  gentle, 

And  take  my  hand,  and  say, '  My  name  is  Death.'  " 


J^w 


CHAPTER   VIII 
ACCIDENTS  AND   CALAMITIES 

"  One  adequate  support 
For  the  calamities  of  mortal  life 
Exists, — one  only:  an  assured  belief 
That  the  procession  of  our  fate,  howe'er 
Sad  or  disturbed,  is  ordered  by  a  Being 
Of  infinite  benevolence  and  power, 
Whose  everlasting  purposes  embrace 
All  accidents,  converting  them  to  good." 

IF  we  can  have  a  faith  like  that,  of  course,  we 
can  face  anything.  The  great  trouble  is 
that  there  are  thousands  of  persons  at  the 
present  time — and  among  them  hundreds  of 
the  best  and  most  intelligent — who  have  some- 
how lost  this  faith,  if  they  ever  had  it;  and 
they  are  disturbed  and  troubled.  They  look 
out  over  the  world  and  wonder  whether  there 
is  wisdom,  goodness,  at  the  heart  of  things. 
I  do  not  feel  at  all  certain  that  I  shall  be  able 
adequately  to  answer  all  the  objections  that 
may  be  raised  to  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of 
a  world  like  this.  I  can  only  try  to  throw 
some  little  light,  if  possible,  into  some  of  the 

153 


154  Life's  Dark  Problems 

dark  places.  But  one  thing  we  need  to  re- 
member at  the  outset.  It  is  not  necessary  that 
we  should  adequately  answer  all  conceivable 
objections.  We  do  need,  however,  if  we  can 
find  it,  a  reasonably  solid  place  on  which  to 
stand ;  and  we  need  light  enough  to  see  to 
take  the  next  step.  We  cannot  expect  to  un- 
derstand an  infinite  universe  in  all  its  details ; 
but,  if  we  can  find  reason  to  believe  that  good- 
ness does  rule,  that  wisdom  does  control,  in 
the  affairs  of  men,  then  we  can  wait  for  the 
unfolding  of  the  meaning  of  many  a  thing 
which  is  still  dark. 

I  wish  to  present  one  alternative  which  may 
be  of  great  practical  help. 

God  exists  or  He  does  not  exist.  If  God 
does  not  exist,  then  there  is  no  complaint  to 
make.  It  is  folly  to  raise  objections  ;  it  is  un- 
reasonable to  find  fault.  If  we  are  in  the 
midst  of  these  tremendous  forces,  and  they  are 
unintelligent,  if  there  is  no  wisdom,  no  care 
anywhere,  why,  then,  we  might  as  well  find 
fault  with  a  steam-engine  or  with  a  thunder- 
bolt as  to  find  fault  with  the  universe.  We 
criticise,  we  question,  we  want  things  explained; 
but  the  desire  for  explanation,  the  desire  to 
criticise,  implies  that  there  is  a  reason  some- 
where, and  that  things  are  capable  of  explana- 


Accidents  and  Calamities         155 

tion,  if  only  we  were  wise  enough  for  the  task. 
If  God  exists,  if  there  is  wisdom  and  love  in 
the  universe  dominant  over  all  that  we  call 
physical,  then  that  carries  with  it  the  absolute 
assurance  that  there  is  an  outcome  which  shall 
justify  the  process  through  which  we  are  pass- 
ing. So,  if  you  find  sufficient  reason  to  be- 
lieve in  God,  then  you  will  face  all  difficulties 
bravely,  and  wait  patiently  to  find  out  what 
they  mean.  But  if  you  do  not  find  any  reason 
to  believe  in  God,  then  stop  complaining,  stop 
criticising,  stop  finding  fault,  stop  growing 
bitter  and  hard ;  for  that  whole  attitude  is  ut- 
terly absurd  and  childish.  If  God  does  not 
exist,  then  there  is  no  one  to  find  fault  with. 
If  He  does,  why,  then,  some  day  things  will  be 
clear ;  for  the  existence  of  God  carries  with  it 
the  assurance  of  an  outcome  that  is  good  and 
wise.  If  we  keep  this  alternative  in  mind,  it 
ought  to  be  of  some  practical  help. 

One  thing  impresses  me  as  strange.  The 
universe  has  existed  for  countless  millions  of 
years.  This  earth  of  ours  has  existed  for 
numberless  ages,  and  humanity  has  been  on 
this  planet  for  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years 
at  least ;  but  people  are  only  beginning  to  re- 
cognise tKeTact  that  we  are  living  under  the 
reign  of  law,  that  this  is  a  universe  of  order, 


156  Life's  Dark  Problems 

not  one  governed  by  caprice,  by  interference, 
by  spasmodic  manifestations  of  inexplicable 
will. 

Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton,  in  one  of  his  books, 
speaks  as  though  the  transition  from  caprice 
to  order  in  the  thought  of  the  world  means 
the  decay  and  dying  out  of  religion.  He  in- 
stances, as  an  illustration,  a  priest,  who  in  a 
railway  accident,  when  the  shock  came,  sud- 
denly lifted  a  prayer  to  God ;  and,  when  he 
was  saved,  he  believed  he  was  saved  because 
of  that  prayer.  That,  says  Hamerton,  is  the 
religious  attitude  of  mind.  The  scientist  be- 
lieves in  the  orderly  working  of  all  natural 
forces ;  and,  just  so  far  as  this  scientific  idea 
extends,  religion  is  leaving  the  world.  So 
says  Hamerton.  In  other  words,  God  cannot 
be  conceived  of  as  a  God  of  order.  He  is  a 
God  of  caprice  and  confusion  ;  and  the  minute 
you  introduce  order  you  eliminate  God.  Only 
a  few  people  even  now  have  really  come  into  a 
state  of  mind  where  they  can  rationally  and 
comfortably  believe  that  God  is  present  and 
working  in  an  orderly  fashion.  They  find  Him 
only  in  the  extraordinary,  in  the  exceptional. 

Within  a  week  I  have  heard  a  clear-minded 
liberal  imply  this  conception  of  things.  If  you 
had  asked  her  the  question  outright,  she  would 


Accidents  and  Calamities         157 

have  denied  that  she  believed  these  old  ideas ; 
and  yet  her  unconscious  expression  implied  that 
belief.  This  means  simply  that,  after  all  these 
ages,  the  world  is  only  coming  to  begin  to 
recognise  the  fact  that  God  is  a  God  of  order, 
and  that  He  works  in  an  orderly  fashion. 

I  wish  to  indicate  by  a  few  illustrations  the 
way  people  have  been  accustomed  to  look  at 
this  matter  of  accident  and  calamity.  Those 
who  are  familiar  with  Virgil  will  remember  the 
story  of  how  ^Lneas,  when  he  had  started  on 
his  voyage  in  search  of  Italy,  met  with  a 
great  calamity  to  his  fleet.  A  sudden  storm 
descended,  and  his  ships  were  blown  out  of 
their  course  and  scattered  over  the  sea,  and 
some  of  them  were  destroyed.  What  had  hap- 
pened ?  How  does  the  poet  explain  this  cir- 
cumstance ?  He  had  to  go  back  to  a  story 
like  this.  Once  upon  a  time  the  three  god- 
desses Juno,  Minerva,  and  Venus  had  a  contest 
as  to  which  was  the  most  beautiful.  Paris, 
the  son  of  Priam,  who  was  the  king  of  Troy, 
was  the  umpire  to  decide  the  question.  Various 
considerations  were  offered,  and  he  was  moved 
to  decide  in  favour  of  Venus.  What  did  that 
mean  ?  It  meant  that  Juno  was  angry  because 
she  did  not  win  in  this  contest.  Angry  with 
whom  ?  Angry  with  Paris,  of  course  ;  but  her 


158  Life's  Dark  Problems 

anger  did  not  stop  there.  She  was  angry  with 
Priam  and  with  the  city  of  Troy  and  the  whole 
Trojan  race  to  which  Paris  belonged.  She 
fought  and  helped  in  the  destruction  and  over- 
throw of  the  city  ;  and  then,  after  the  remnant 
had  set  forth  on  a  voyage  for  Italy,  she  pur- 
sued them  with  her  hatred.  She  went  to  the 
god  of  the  wind,  ^Eolus,  and  offered  him  a 
consideration  for  which  he  was  induced  to  let 
loose  this  storm,  and  so  bring  about  this  great 
calamity.  Do  you  see  ?  No  conception  of 
natural  order,  no  conception  of  decent  human 
justice,  only  the  anger  of  a  goddess  that 
brought  about  that  great  calamity  of  the 
storm  at  sea ! 

Take  another  case  from  the  antique  world. 
Niobe  was  the  proud  mother  of  twelve  beau- 
tiful children,  six  sons  and  six  daughters.  She 
boasts  of  her  good  fortune ;  and  some  of  her 
rivals  are  angry.  The  gods  are  jealous  ;  and 
in  a  fit  of  pique,  they  destroy  at  once  all  the 
twelve  children  and  leave  her  the  image  of 
desolation  and  woe  for  all  time, — no  concep- 
tion of  any  natural  order,  no  conception  of 
any  decent  human  justice.  A  divinity  is 
offended  in  some  way ;  and  a  great  calamity 
follows. 

We  hear  echoes  every  little  while,  till  this 


Accidents  and  Calamities         159 

year  1905  A.D.,  of  similar  conceptions  still  lin- 
gering in  people's  minds  as  to  the  way  God 
treats  His  children.  Do  you  not  know  of  any 
case  where  a  mother  has  been  supposed  to  be 
proud  of  her  child,  or  loved  a  child  too  much, 
until  God,  jealous  and  angry,  has  sent  a  dis- 
ease or  calamity  of  some  sort  upon  her  ?  We 
have  not  yet  outgrown  this  pagan,  barbaric, 
immoral,  utterly  contemptible  way  of  looking 
at  things. 

These  ideas  were  not  confined  to  the  pagan 
world.  You  have  only  to  pass  the  narrow 
border  into  Palestine  to  find  similar  concep- 
tions dominating  there.  I  call  your  attention 
to  one  or  two  illustrations.  During  the  reign 
of  Ahab  the  heavens  were  shut  for  three  years 
and  six  months,  according  to  the  story.  No 
rain  and  no  dew  in  all  that  time.  Why  ?  Be- 
cause Ahab  was  a  wicked  king,  and  God  hated 
him.  But  He  punished  not  Ahab  alone  ;  He 
punishes  him  least  of  any  one ;  for,  being  the 
king,  if  there  was  anything  to  eat  and  drink 
in  the  country,  of  course  his  wants  would  be 
supplied.  But  He  arbitrarily  punished  all  the 
people  of  the  land  on  account  of  the  supposed 
wickedness  of  the  king. 

One  other  illustration.  David  commits  what 
no  one  of  us  would  ever  think  of  as  being  a 


160  Life's  Dark  Problems 

sin  at  all.  He  orders  a  census, — a  counting 
of  the  people.  This  is  supposed  to  indicate 
a  lack  of  trust  in  God,  who  was  able  to  make 
armies  conquer,  whether  they  were  as  numer- 
ous as  their  opponents  or  not.  So  God  was  an- 
gry with  David  for  taking  the  census.  What 
does  He  do  ?  Punish  David  ?  Not  directly  ; 
but  thousands  and  thousands  of  Israelites  are 
smitten  by  a  sudden  calamity  and  slain.  Here, 
again,  there  is  no  conception  of  natural  order, 
no  conception  of  what  to  us  are  fundamental 
principles  in  morals.  And  yet,  as  I  have  said, 
this  feeling  still  exists.  You  will  hear  it  on 
the  street  to-morrow  if  you  will  listen, — a  be- 
lief that  God  still  governs  the  world  in  that 
sort  of  fashion.  An  accident  or  calamity  hap- 
pens, and  it  is  a  divine  judgment. 

It  is  the  same  in  the  New  Testament.  A 
tower  in  Siloam  falls,  and  eighteen  men  are 
killed.  The  popular  conception  is  not  that 
the  tower  was  improperly  built,  not  that  the 
foundation  was  defective,  not  that  something 
was  wrong,  but  that  God  pushed  it  over  to 
kill  these  people.  That  is  what  the  popular 
talk  implied.  And  you  may  trace  the  matter 
from  that  day  to  this  up  through  the  history 
of  the  church. 

There  is  a  great  fire,  and  a  city  is  half-con- 


Accidents  and  Calamities         161 

sumed  :  it  is  a  judgment  of  God.  There  is  a 
pestilence,  a  plague  :  it  is  a  judgment  of  God. 
The  army  of  a  certain  king  is  defeated  :  it  is  a 
judgment  of  God.  No  matter  what  happens, 
it  is  a  judgment.  The  lightning  stroke  is  a 
judgment,  the  falling  of  a  bridge  is  a  judgment. 
That  is  the  way  in  which  things  are  explained. 

Among  our  ancestors  in  New  England  we 
find  the  same  ideas  prevalent ;  and  they  have 
come  down  to  very  modern  times.  In  every 
such  calamity,  God  was  angry ;  and  only  as 
they  could  ward  off  the  divine  wrath  would 
the  evil  cease.  I  remember  only  a  few  years 
ago  there  was  an  epidemic  in  Montreal.  What 
did  the  people  do  ?  Study  it  from  the  point 
of  view  of  scientific  medicine  ?  No.  What 
did  happen  ?  They  organised  a  religious  pro- 
cession, and  marched  through  the  streets, 
carrying  the  infection  everywhere.  It  was  a 
judgment  of  God  ;  and  humiliation  and  prayer, 
the  magic  of  saints'  bones  and  miracle  of  some 
sort,  must  be  looked  to  to  ward  off  the  danger. 

What  are  we  learning  to-day  in  the  East  ? 
I  interject  this  right  here,  comparing  it  to  what 
happened  in  the  city  of  Montreal.  Japanese 
surgeons  have  managed  the  matter  of  disease 
in  such  a  way  that  during  this  entire  campaign 
less  than  i  per  cent,  have  died  of  disease. 


1 62  Life's  Dark  Problems 

They  have  practically  wiped  it  out  of  exist- 
ence by  pure  scientific  study  and  sanitary 
regulation. 

What  is  the  trouble  with  the  judgment  the- 
ory in  the  government  of  the  world  ?  In  the 
first  place,  it  overlooks  the  fact  that  the  judg- 
ments are  frequently  immoral,  and  almost 
always  unjust.  On  the  judgment  theory  the 
right  people  ought  to  be  hurt.  Frequently 
the  right  people  are  not  hurt  at  all.  It  is  the 
good  people,  the  innocent  people,  the  kindly 
people,  the  lovely  people,  quite  as  often  as  the 
bad  who  are  apparently  punished.  Can  we 
have  any  belief  in  a  good  God  managing  the 
world  after  that  fashion  ? 

There  is  another  evil  about  this  way  of  look- 
ing at  things.  It  diverts  our  attention  from 
the  fact  that  God  is  always  at  work  by  orderly 
methods.  He  is  in  the  sunshine  and  the  rain, 
in  the  growth  of  the  grasses  and  trees,  in  the 
opening  of  the  flowers  and  the  ripening  of  the 
fruits,  in  the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun,  in 
the  ordinary  ongoings  of  the  world,  in  all  that 
is  beautiful  and  benign  and  helpful,  because 
they  are  all  the  expression  of  the  thought  and 
feeling  and  life  of  God.  God  is  not  in  the 
accidental  only.  He  is  in  what  we  call — in 
our  ignorance — the  accidental  because  the 


Accidents  and  Calamities         163 

accidental  is  merely  the  interrupted  working 
of  some  regular  force.  (  Something  gets  in  the 
way,  and  then  the  extraordinary  thing  happens  ; 
But  it  is  only  the  ordinary  forces  that  have 
produced  the  result?) 

Are  there,  then;  no  judgments  of  God? 
There  are  judgments  of  God  every  day,  every 
hour,  every  moment,  all  our  lives ;  but  they  are 
the  expression  of  the  natural  working  out  of 
dungs  If  there  be  an  infraction  of  God's 
Iaws7  there  is  an  inevitable  result. 

To  illustrate  :  a  young  man  studies,  hoping 
to  fit  himself  to  enter  Harvard  or  Yale.  When 
the  day  comes  for  the  test,  he  fails.  It  is  his 
day  of  judgment,  but  it  is  not  extraordinary. 
He  did  not  study  carefully  enough,  he  did  not 
comply  with  the  conditions ;  and,  when  he 
came  to  the  trial,  he  came  short, — that  is  all. 
That  is  an  illustration  of  the  working  of  the 
divine  law  of  judgment.  In  my  physical  life 
there  are  the  regular  eternal  laws,  the  forces 
of  God.  I  disregard  some  one  of  them.  It 
does  not  produce  any  marked  effect,  or  I  do 
not  notice  it.  I  disregard  it  again  and  again. 
By  and  by,  something  happens :  I  am  ill. 
What  does  that  mean  ?  It  is  no  arbitrary  in- 
fliction of  a  penalty.  The  accumulation  of 
little  activities  results  in  this  definite  outcome 


164  Life's  Dark  Problems 

at  last.  God  is  at  work  all  the  time ;  and  at 
last  I  stand  in  judgment,  and  am  condemned 
because  I  have  broken  His  laws.  Nothing  ex- 
traordinary ;  it  is  the  working  out  of  natural 
forces  according  to  God's  changeless  laws. 

A  similar  thing  is  true  in  my  mental  make- 
up. I  look  for  truth  or  I  do  not ;  I  study  to 
attain  truth  or  I  do  not.  I  cultivate  some 
special  faculty  or  power  or  I  neglect  it.  By 
and  by  something  occurs  that  puts  me  to  the 
test ;  and  I  fail.  I  am  judged  ;  I  am  acquitted 
or  condemned.  Has  anything  extraordinary 
happened  ?  Nothing.  Natural  forces  have 
been  working ;  and  these  results  have  occurred, 
that  is  all. 

So,  because  I  do  not  believe  in  these  arbi- 
trary inflictions  of  judgment,  do  not  think  that 
I  exclude  judgment  from  the  world.  Judg- 
ment is  everywhere  and  always  in  the  form  of 
inevitable  results. 

With  these  principles  in  mind,  let  us  consider 
some  of  the  great  accidents  and  calamities  of 
the  world,  and  see  if  we  can  throw  any  light 
upon  them. 

First,  note  some  of  these  great  catastrophes 
that  occur  now  and  then  on  a  large  scale  be- 
cause of  the  great  forces  which  are  at  work  in 
the  evolution  of  the  world. 


Accidents  and  Calamities         165 

For  the  purpose  of  illustration  I  will  seem 
to  accept  the  nebular  hypothesis  of  the  world,  no 
matter  whether  it  be  true  or  not.  According  to 
that  theory,  the  space  now  filled  by  the  solar  sys- 
tem was  once  filled  with  a  fire  mist  This  con- 
densed and  rotated  ;  and  by  and  by  ring  after 
ring,  as  it  cooled,  was  flung  off  from  the  outer 
rim  and  condensed  into  planets.  After  a  time 
our  little  earth,  one  of  the  youngest  children  of 
the  sun,  was  born.  It  was  fluid  and  hot,  but 
gradually  it  began  to  cool ;  and,  as  it  cooled, 
the  outer  surface  was  caked  and  hardened. 
And  they  tell  us  that,  according  to  this  theory, 
the  centre  of  the  earth  is  hot  and  probably 
molten  to-day.  No  matter  whether  this  be  true 
or  not,  for  my  purpose.  According  to  this 
theory,  as  the  earth  cools,  it  shrinks.  What 
does  that  mean  ?  Did  you  ever — /  have,  as  a 
farmer's  boy — notice  the  cooling  of  a  pan  of 
lard,  how  it  cracks,  and  how  mountain  chains 
and  ridges  are  heaped  up  ?  Precisely  the  same 
sort  of  process  is  going  on  in  the  cooling  of 
the  crust  of  the  earth.  The  crust  breaks  and 
mountain  chains  are  elevated.  It  trembles,  and 
you  have  earthquakes.  The  inner  fires  break 
through,  and  you  have  volcanoes ;  and  the 
forces  at  work  now  and  then  start  up  great 
tidal  waves  in  the  sea  which  beat  against  the 


1 66  Life's  Dark  Problems 

shore  with  destructive  power.  C  Now  these 
things  that  happen  in  a  world  like  this 
are  only,  so  to  speak,  the  earth's  growing 
pains. )  They  are  natural  and  inevitable  in  the 
process  of  the  evolution  of  a  planet  like  this. 
But  they  produce  great  catastrophes  after  life 
appears  on  the  planet.  Form  after  form  of 
life  is  swept  out  of  existence.  Cities,  towns, 
tribes,  are  wiped  out.  Take,  as  an  illustration, 
the  destruction  of  Herculaneum  and  Pompeii 
by  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius.  Was  that  an  act 
of  carelessness  or  thoughtlessness  or  hatred 
on  the  part  of  God  ?  It  was  one  of  the  inevit- 
able happenings  in  the  growth  of  a  planet. 
These  great  forces  are  in  their  working  inevit- 
ably a  part  of  the  manifestation  of  planetary 
life. 

But  let  me  make  one  suggestion.  When 
those  towns  were  planted  where  they  were, 
the  people  knew  that  they  were  liable  to  be 
overwhelmed  in  this  way.  Why  did  they 
build  there  then  ?  It  was  a  beautiful  place 
for  a  town, — good  soil,  a  fine  view  of  the  har- 
bour,— and  the  people  took  their  chances, — the 
same  gambling  instinct  which  is  in  us  all,  and 
which  makes  it  possible  to  put  ourselves  in 
places  of  peril,  disregarding  suggestions  of 
danger.  This,  perhaps,  had  something  to  do 


Accidents  and  Calamities         167 

with  it.  But  must  we  hold  God  responsible 
when  people  build  a  city  where  they  know  it 
is  in  the  track  of  danger,  and  when  there  is 
plenty  of  space  in  which  they  might  plant 
their  cities  where  they  would  not  be  liable  to 
calamities  like  this  ? 

Take  a  modern  case.  A  little  while  ago 
the  city  of  Galveston  was  largely  destroyed 
by  a  great  tidal  wave.  Who  is  responsible  ? 
If  they  had  stopped  to  think,  they  would  have 
known  when  they  built  the  city  that,  if  ever  a 
tidal  wave  did  come, — and,  of  course,  they 
knew  that  it  might  come, — they  would  be 
liable  to  this  kind  of  overflow.  But  people 
are  never  willing  to  put  themselves  to  trouble 
and  expense  in  the  way  of  prevention  until 
they  have  been  driven  to  do  so  by  a  calamity. 
It  would  not  have  cost  as  much  as  it  did  after- 
wards ;  and  all  the  loss  would  have  been  saved. 

How  is  it  in  regard  to  a  fire?  People  will 
go  on  blindly,  grasping  the  money  they  can 
make  at  once,  and  putting  up  buildings  that 
are  simply  tinder  boxes.  They  know  all  the 
time,  that  they  are  liable  to  the  overwhelming 
devastation  of  fire.  Yet  they  go  on  taking 
their  chances,  gathering  in  the  money  to-day, 
and  hoping  that  they  will  escape,  illustrating 
the  spirit  of  Louis  XIV.,  who,  indulging  himself 


168  Life's  Dark  Problems 

and  having  his  own  way,  exclaimed,  "After 
me  the  deluge  ! "  This  is  the  spirit  in  which 
people  build,  the  way  in  which  they  indulge 
themselves  ;  and  yet,  when  the  calamity  comes, 
which  they  might  have  foreseen  and  provided 
against,  it  is  "  a  mysterious  dispensation  of 
Providence  ! "  This  is  the  marvellous  work- 
ing of  God  !  This  is  a  judgment !  It  is  no- 
thing but  a  natural  result  of  their  own  deeds, 
of  their  own  folly. 

How  could  these  great  catastrophes  be  pre- 
vented? I  suppose  some  might  suggest  that 
God  might  have  built  the  world  in  some  other 
way.  Some  might  suggest  that  a  tremendous 
miracle  might  have  been  wrought  at  the  criti- 
cal moment.  Some  might  say  that  God,  who 
made  the  Red  Sea  stand  up  while  the  child- 
ren of  Israel  marched  through,  might  have 
interfered  with  the  tidal  wave  at  Galveston. 
You  can  indulge  in  speculations  like  that  if 
you  choose.  Some  would  think  men  might 
have  been  suddenly  made  supernaturally  wise 
so  as  certainly  to  have  foreseen  these  accid- 
ents ;  but  these  are  not  rational  explanations. 

I  wish  now  to  consider  some  modern  accid- 
ents and  calamities.  The  principles  involved 
are  clearer,  if  I  take  these  concrete  cases. 

I  have  already  alluded  to  one  case  of  epi- 


Accidents  and  Calamities         169 

demic  disease.  Consider  the  great  plague  in 
London.  It  never  occurred  to  the  people  at 
that  time  that  they  were  responsible  for  it. 
They  believed  that  it  was  an  arbitrary  inflic- 
tion of  God,  and  that  the  way  to  overcome  it 
was  by  humiliation  and  fasting  and  prayer. 
But  we  are.  learning  that  disease  is  something 
we  can  master  if  we  will.  We  can  wipe  out 
the  yellow  fever.  We  can  make  impossible 
the  devastation  of  almost  any  disease.  It  is 
merely  a  question  as  to  whether  or  not  we 
will.  In  regard  to  this,  then,  we  have  no 
right  to  hold  God  responsible.  What  do  the 
people  do  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  ?  They 
pour  into  the  river  every  kind  of  filth,  and 
then  the  water  is  sacred ;  and  it  is  a  part  of 
their  religious  ceremony  to  bathe  in  it  and 
drink  it.  And,  when  disease  comes,  the  gods 
are  angry ! 

Let  us  come  right  close  home.  A  year  or 
two  ago  there  was  a  great  railway  accident 
here  in  the  tunnel.  Many  people  were  killed, 
many  others  injured.  What  was  the  matter  ? 
Was  it  a  mysterious  calamity  that  we  need  to 
explain  in  order  to  believe  in  the  goodness 
and  justice  of  God  ?  It  was  a  purely  prevent- 
able thing.  Human  carelessness  and  human 
greed  wer  entirely  responsible.  Let  us  not 


1 70  Life's  Dark  Problems 

dare,  even  in  the  privacy  of  our  own  hearts, 
to  charge  God  as  responsible  in  cases  like  this. 
Turn  to  another  case.  Last  year  the  Gen- 
eral Slocum  was  burned  here  in  the  East 
River ;  and  my  morning  paper  was  flooded 
with  letters  from  persons  who  said  that  it  was 
simply  absurd,  in  the  face  of  calamities  like 
that,  to  talk  any  longer  about  God  or  about 
God's  goodness,  or  about  any  wisdom  in  the 
management  of  the  universe.  A  world  in 
which  a  thing  like  that  could  happen  must  be 
a  world  for  an  atheist,  or  worse.  Letter  after 
letter  gravely  took  this  ground  ;  and  I  suppose 
thousands  of  persons  thought  it  was  wisdom. 
What  really  happened?  A  steamer,  old  and 
not  in  the  best  condition,  was  dangerously 
overcrowded,  to  start  with.  It  was  manned 
by  a  crew  not  thoroughly  trained.  There  was 
no  adequate  provision  in  case  of  fire.  The 
hose  was  rotten,  so  that,  when  pressure  was 
brought  to  bear  on  it,  it  naturally  burst.  The 
life-preservers  were  so  heavy  that  they  sank 
of  themselves  instead  of  floating  the  persons 
dependent  upon  them.  This  was  the  condi- 
tion of  affairs.  A  fire  starts  ;  and  then,  instead 
of  running  to  the  shore,  so  that  as  many  as 
possible  might  leap  and  escape,  the  ship — for 
some  reason  I  have  never  been  able  to  under- 


Accidents  and  Calamities         I71 

stand — headed  in  another  direction.  Who  was 
responsible  ?  The  inspectors,  the  owners,  the 
managers.  It  was  carelessness  ;  it  was  a  case 
of  greed,  of  inefficiency  of  every  kind.  It  was 
man's  stupidity  and  selfishness,  nothing  else 
in  the  world.  What  would  people  have? 
Would  they  have  had  an  army  of  angels  sud- 
denly appear  in  the  blue  to  put  a  premium  on 
human  stupidity  and  avarice  ?  What  would 
you  have  God  do  ?  If  I  walk  over  the  edge 
of  a  precipice,  would  you  have  Him  upset  the 
universe  by  suspending  the  law  of  gravitation 
to  prevent  the  result  of  my  carelessness  ? 
What  would  you  have  God  do?  Suddenly 
change  the  nature  of  fire,  so  that  it  will  not 
burn  ?  Suddenly  change  the  nature  of  water, 
so  that  it  will  not  drown  ?  Would  you  have 
Him  save  people  from  the  results  of  their 
own  stupidity,  their  own  avarice,  their  own 
selfishness,  their  own  weakness,  and  thus  put 
a  premium  on  these  qualities  ?  Why  should 
any  one  take  the  trouble  to  build  a  boat  de- 
cently, to  man  it  decently,  to  run  it  decently, 
if  at  the  last  moment  God  will  appear  to  save 
people  from  the  results  of  their  own  mistakes  ? 
What  kind  of  government  is  it  that  people 
expect  in  this  world  ? 

You  will   find   everywhere,  as  in  studying 


i72  Life's  Dark  Problems 

calamities  and  accidents,  that  the  same  princi- 
ples are  at  work.  Results  follow  because  peo- 
ple are  not  willing  to  study  the  laws  of  God 
and  obey  them.  What  kind  of  a  universe  is 
this  in  which  we  are  ?  It  is  one  in  which  these 
great  forces  of  nature  are  at  work  according 
to  unvarying  and  unchanging  laws  ;  and  we 
can  find  out  what  those  laws  are.  That  is 
what  our  brains  are  for.  If  we  choose  to  study 
these  laws,  and  find  out  how  these  forces  work 
and  get  them  on  our  side,  then  there  is  hardly 
anything  that  we  cannot  accomplish.  Omni- 
potence is  at  our  back  as  our  helper.  We 
must  study  the  methods  of  Omnipotence,  and 
be  willing  to  obey  the  eternal  conditions.  The 
whole  world  is  being  made  over,  in  the  words 
of  the  prophet,  in  ways  that  we  did  not  dream 
of.  The  valleys  are  being  exalted,  and  the 
hills  and  mountains  are  being  made  low,  the 
crooked  made  straight  and  the  rough  places 
plain.  The  seas  are  becoming  ferryways. 
The  mountains  are  pierced,  the  rivers  are  tun- 
nelled and  bridged.  We  talk  without  regard  to 
distance ;  and  we  are  making  over  the  earth. 
In  the  beauty  and  glory  and  wonder  of  modern 
civilisation  we  are  learning  God's  methods, 
co-operating  with  God,  finding  out  how  God's 
forces  work,  and  turning  them  to  account,  and 


Accidents  and  Calamities         173 

bringing  forth  these  wonderful  results.  Now 
what  does  this  mean  ?  Here  is  this  tremend- 
ous force  of  electricity.  Do  I  expect  God  to 
change  it  because  I  get  in  its  track  ?  It  is 
working  for  good ;  but  all  this  tremendous 
power  must  blast  whatever  comes  in  its  way, 
whether  it  does  so  as  a  result  of  carelessness 
or  not. 

To  illustrate  my  point,  I  make  a  personal 
confession.  Three  times  since  I  came  to  this 
city  I  have  escaped  death  by  an  instant.  Who 
was  to  blame?  Suppose  I  had  been  killed, 
would  it  have  been  a  mysterious  accident  or 
calamity,  for  which  God  was  responsible  ?  / 
was  to  blame  every  time.  Once  it  was  that 
insane  desire  to  catch  a  particular  car.  It  did 
not  make  any  difference  whether  I  caught 
that  car  or  not.  I  was  in  no  hurry.  If  I  had 
been  delayed  for  an  hour,  the  universe  would 
have  gone  on  just  as  well.  I  risked  my  life 
in  pure  foolishness. 

You  will  find,  if  you  study  them  carefully, 
that  we  ourselves  are  nearly  always  responsi- 
ble for  accidents  or  calamities.  They  are  no 
mystery.  They  are  usually  the  results  of 
human  greed,  stupidity,  and  carelessness. 
What,  then,  shall  we  do  ?  Let  us  recognise 
this  ;  and  let  us  recognise  the  wonderful  work 


174  Life's  Dark  Problems 

of  God  in  the  ordinary  ways  of  this  marvel- 
lous world.  Let  us  study  carefully  to  find 
out  what  His  conditions  are.  Let  us  co- 
operate with  them,  and  make  the  world,  as 
we  may,  a  paradise. 

Let  us  remember  one  other  thing.  If,  in 
the  course  of  one  of  these  calamities,  a  hun- 
dred people  are  killed  at  once,  that  introduces 
no  new  problem.  If  death  be  explicable  at 
11,  it  is  just  as  easily  explained  in  the  case  of 
a  hundred  as  in  one.  The  size  of  the  calam- 
ity apparently  overwhelms  us ;  but  it  does  not 
change  the  principles  at  issue. 

Let  us  also  remember  that  this  is  a  world 
in  which  we  are  learning  to  live ;  a  world  in 
which  we  are  cultivating  our  own  natures, 
developing  our  own  souls ;  that  it  is  precisely 
in  dealing  with  such  great  forces  as  these  that 
we  can  best  come  to  the  consciousness  of  our- 
selves. And,  if  this  is  a  primary  school,  whether 
I  go  out  to-day  or  to-morrow,  as  the  result  of 
old  age  or  as  the  result  of  accident,  does  not 
much  matter,  if  I  am  still  in  God's  universe, 
still  learning  God's  lessons,  still  building  my- 
self up  into  the  higher  nature  of  one  of  His 
children. 


CHAPTER  IX 
MENTAL  DISEASE  AND  DECAY 

A  BLOW  on  the  head,  if  it  is  severe  enough, 
will  render  a  man  unconscious.  During 
certain  diseases  he  is  insane.  A  small  quan- 
tity of  Indian  hemp  seems  to  disturb,  or  entirely 
to  suspend,  the  ordinary  working  of  his  mind. 
The  excessive  use  of  alcohol  will  produce  simi- 
lar results.  You  are  familiar  with  all  these 
facts.  A  man  is  vigorous  and  strong  in  his 
youth  ;  and  the  physical  vigour  seems  to  match 
and  go  along  with  his  mental  power.  But 
this  culminates  by  and  by.  He  ascends  to  the 
summit  of  his  development,  and  then  begins 
to  go  down  on  the  other  side ;  and,  as  he  goes 
down  physically,  he  seems  also  to  decline 
mentally.  As  people  get  old,  their  memory 
fails  them ;  they  will  tell  you  the  same  thing 
over  half  a  dozen  times  in  a  day.  They  have 
forgotten  it.  And  so  in  every  direction  you 
will  find  these  signs  that  we  ordinarily  speak 
of  as  growing  mental  weakness,  until  by  and 

175 


1 76  Life's  Dark  Problems 

by  you  reach  the  condition  that  Shakespeare 
speaks  of  in  the  familiar  words  : 

"  Last  scene  of  all, 

That  ends  this  strange,  eventful  history, 
Is  second  childishness  and  mere  oblivion; 
Sans  teeth,  sans  eyes,  sans  taste,  sans — everything." 

The  man  appears  to  go  out,  like  a  snuffed 
candle ;  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see  the  process, 
that  is  the  end. 

Besides  this,  there  are  other  sad  facts  that 
go  along  with  this  class,  such  as  idiocy,  those 
cases  by  the  hundred  and  the  thousand  over 
the  world  where  there  appears  to  be  no  com- 
plete mental  development ;  and  there  are  the 
sad,  sad  cases  of  insanity.  There  are  asylums, 
I  suppose,  in  every  State  of  the  Union  and  in 
every  country  of  the  civilised  world,  crowded 
with  those  who  have,  as  we  say,  lost  their 
minds.  I  shall  not  dwell  on  facts  like  these. 
I  do  not  need  to  stir  your  sympathy.  I  do  not 
need  to  appeal  to  your  imagination.  Very 
likely  you  are  all  too  alive  to  the  seriousness 
and  the  sadness  of  facts  like  these.  I  will  hint 
them,  recognise  them  ;  and  we  will  go  on. 

The  primitive  peoples  of  the  world  had  a 
very  natural  explanation  of  all  these  things. 
When  a  warrior  was  struck  a  blow  on  the 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        177 

head  and  became  unconscious,  or  when  he 
fainted  for  any  reason,  or  when  he  was  asleep, 
his  mind  for  the  time  being,  his  soul,  his  essen- 
tial personality,  had  gone  away;  and  they 
waited  for  him  to  come  back  again.  When  hex 
awakes,  when  consciousness  returns,  they  sup- 
pose the  soul  has  come  back  to  the  body.  We 
keep  in  our  ordinary  speech  a  remnant  still  of 
this  prevalent  idea.  For,  when  one  of  our 
friends  faints  and  recovers  consciousness,  we 
say  he  has  come  to,  come  back  to  the  body. 
This  is  a  suggestion,  a  survival,  of  the  old  be- 
lief. In  the  cases  of  idiocy  and  insanity,  their 
general  explanation  was  that  of  demoniac  pos- 
session. They  did  not  mean,  they  did  not  be- 
lieve, that  the  person  in  all  cases  was  controlled 
by  evil  spirits.  One  might  be  taken  possession 
of  by  a  god  or  by  a  good  spirit  for  some  good 
purpose.  So  they  regarded  many  persons  in 
this  condition  as  inspired ;  and  they  tended 
them  carefully,  and  waited  upon  their  utter- 
ances, trusting  to  some  wise  man  to  interpret 
that  which  was  meaningless  in  ordinary  cases,  so 
that  they  might  receive  something  in  the  way  of 
supernatural  guidance.  The  New  Testament, 
as  you  are  aware,  is  full  of  this  belief.  There  is 
no  recognition  there  of  any  natural  insanity,  as 
we  are  accustomed  to  think  of  it  to-day.  The 


178  Life's  Dark  Problems 

insane  were  possessed,  dominated,  by  some  in- 
visible personality,  controlled  in  this  way  for 
good  or  ill  by  the  power  which  had  taken  posses- 
sion of  them.  I  only  mention  this  in  explana- 
tion, in  passing.  I  shall  not  attempt  either  to 
refute  or  defend  any  of  these  theories,  I  will 
simply  say,  however,  that  there  are  persons  in 
the  modern  world  who  share  all  of  these  primi- 
tive beliefs ;  and  these  are  not  in  all  cases  ignor- 
ant or  credulous  or  uneducated  people.  There 
are  those  who  have  made  careful  studies  of 
these  things  who  hold  that  insanity  in  many 
cases  is  the  result  of  the  influence  of  some  in- 
visible personality.  I  waive  this,  however,  one 
side,  as  not  germane  to  the  purpose  that  I  have 
in  hand. 

Now  I  wish  to  say  here,  as  I  have  said  once 
or  twice  before  in  connection  with  some  of 
these  hard  problems,  that  it  ought  to  help  us 
to  clear  our  minds  of  confusion,  to  take  clear- 
cut  cognisance  of  one  fact.  No  soul,  no  God, 
no  explanation,  no  need  of  any  ;  no  difficulty, 
if  these  facts  are  the  result  of  the  working  of 
forces  that  do  not  feel,  that  do  not  think,  that 
do  not  love.  If  they  are  the  outcome,  the 
manifestations,  of  blind  power,  why  then,  of 
course,  there  is  no  intelligent  explanation  pos- 
sible. We  can  trace  and  study,  if  we  choose, 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        179 

the  forces  that  are  at  work ;  but  there  is  no 
rational  explanation,  there  is  no  way  of  getting 
at  a  satisfactory  solution  of  this  dark  problem 
of  life.  The  poet-author  of  the  Book  of  Job 
cried  out  that  he  wished  he  could  find  God, 
that  he  could  come  to  Him,  appeal  to  Him,  vin- 
dicate his  innocence,  and  ask  Him  for  an  ex- 
planation. But,  if  there  be  no  God,  then  all 
this  cry  of  the  soul  for  some  satisfactory  ex- 
planation of  these  difficulties  is,  on  the  face  of 
it,  absurd.  We  must  simply  submit  to  inevit- 
able facts,  and  there  end  it.  But  we  do  hun- 
ger for  an  explanation.  There  is  that  in  us 
which  wishes  to  believe  that  we  are  souls,  that 
we  are  not  to  be  snuffed  out,  like  a  candle,  in 
the  act  of  dying.  There  is  something  in  us 
which  wishes  to  believe  that  there  are  intellig- 
ence and  sympathy  and  love  in  the  universe 
somewhere,  that  there  is  some  person  who 
cares.  And,  if  there  is,  why,  then,  it  is  legiti- 
mate for  us  to  seek  an  explanation  for  these 
dark  facts.  I  shall  go  on  that  theory,  and  dis- 
cuss the  problem  as  though  we  were  souls  and 
as  though  God  existed. 

I  shall,  however,  take  cognisance  of  other 
sides  of  the  problem ;  and  I  ask  you  to  con- 
sider this  fact.  There  are  two  possible  theories 
in  the  light  of  which  you  can  explain,  after  a 


i8o  Life's  Dark  Problems 

fashion,  the  working  of  what  we  call  the  mind. 
One  is  the  materialistic  theory ;  the  other,  of 
course,  is  the  spiritualistic  theory,  using  the 
word  in  a  philosophic  sense. 

On  the  theory  of  materialism,  the  mind  is  the 
product  of  the  brain,  just  as  really  as  bile  is 
the  product  of  the  liver.  No  brain,  no  mind, 
on  that  theory.  It  is  the  outcome,  the  result, 
of  the  combination  and  the  motions  of  certain 
tiny  material  particles  that  make  up  the  brain. 
On  this  theory,  of  course,  it  is  easy  to  under, 
stand  that  when  the  brain  is  injured  the  work- 
ing of  the  mind  must  be  interfered  with,  and 
that  when  the  brain  ceases  to  exist  the  mind 
also  ceases.  Gautama,  the  founder  of  Buddh- 
ism, that  was  originally  atheistic  and  material- 
istic, compared  a  human  being  to  a  chariot.  A 
chariot  was  made  up  of  different  parts  that  en- 
tered into  its  construction  ;  but  you  take  it  to 
pieces,  and  the  chariot  ceases  to  be.  This  was 
one  of  his  illustrations.  Of  course,  idiocy,  in- 
sanity, all  the  phenomena  that  we  have  now 
in  mind,  would  be  easily  explicable  on  that 
theory.  But  I  wish  to  note  that  they  are  just 
as  easily  explicable  on  the  other  theory. 

Suppose  the  soul,  the  mind,  is  something, 
an  entity,  a  personality,  back  of  the  brain  and 
using  it  as  an  instrument  through  which  to 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        181 

communicate  with  this  material  world  :  are  not 
all  these  phenomena  as  easily  to  be  understood 
on  this  theory  as  on  the  other  ? 

Let  me  suggest  one  or  two  illustrations. 
Here  is  a  piano.  No  matter  if  Paderewski 
himself  sits  at  it,  ready  to  bring  out  its  won- 
drous possibilities,  if  it  is  out  of  tune,  he  can- 
not produce  perfect  music.  If  it  is  broken,  he 
cannot  produce  music  at  all.  Paderewski, 
however,  is  complete,  he  is  not  injured ;  but 
he  cannot  manifest  this  marvellous  musical 
power  of  his  because  the  instrument  through 
which  he  works  is  not  capable  of  showing  what 
he  can  do.  If  Hercules  had  placed  in  his  hand 
a  slight,  frail  reed  instead  of  his  club,  he  could 
not  strike  with  all  the  power  of  Hercules.  The 
effect  of  his  blow  would  be  limited  by  the 
capacity  of  the  reed.  If  the  reed  were  broken, 
that  would  not  necessarily  touch  Hercules. 
He  might  be  all  there,  and  yet  utterly  incapa- 
ble of  manifesting  his  power. 

Suppose  you  go  into  a  great  factory.  The 
engines,  the  source  of  power,  are  in  another 
room,  shut  off  from  where  you  are.  Belts  and 
pulleys  come  through  the  wall,  and  are  at- 
tached to  machinery  of  which  you  can  observe 
the  working.  Suppose  you  cut  the  connec- 
tion. The  engine  in  the  other  room  is  intact, 


1 82  Life's  Dark  Problems 

the  power  of  the  steam  or  electricity  is  in  no 
way  interfered  with  ;  and  yet  all  the  machinery 
must  stop  simply  because  the  connection  is 
broken.  Visit  the  city  of  Buffalo.  They  tell 
me  that  there  is  machinery  worked  by  the 
power  of  the  falling  of  the  waters  of  Niagara. 
Electricity  is  generated,  and  is  carried  to  Buf- 
falo. As  in  the  case  of  a  factory,  if  you  cut 
the  connection,  though  all  the  mighty  power  is 
intact,  its  working  is  interfered  with,  and  the 
results  cease.  This  illustration,  I  take  it,  will 
make  perfectly  clear  the  point  I  have  in  mind ; 
and  that  is  all  I  wish. 

It  is,  then,  conceivable,  as  a  theory,  that  the 
mind  is  the  product  of  the  brain.  There  is 
another  theory, — that  the  mind  is  not  the  pro- 
duct of  the  brain,  but  is  an  independent  entity, 
a  personality,  that  for  the  time  being  uses  the 
brain.  There  are  those  who  have  made  a  care- 
ful study  of  these  things  who  tell  us  that  inside 
these  material  bodies  there  are  ethereal  bodies, 
and  that  when  this  body  disappears,  dissolves, 
the  other  goes  out  intact  and  uninjured,  a  com- 
plete personality,  not  only  as  fine,  as  strong  as 
it  was  before,  but  even  taking  on  additional 
power  and  entering  into  new  and  wider  and 
higher  relations.  This  is  perfectly  conceiv- 
able. Nobody  is  wise  enough  to  disprove  the 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        183 

supposition.  It  is  no  more  unnatural  than  is 
the  history  of  the  grub  which  breaks  its  chrys- 
alis, and  emerges  into  another  and  higher  ele- 
ment as  a  butterfly.  I  only  say,  and  I  only 
wish  you  to  understand  me  as  saying,  that  this 
is  possible,  and  that  there  is  no  science  which 
can  contradict  it. 

And  now,  while  their  opinions  do  not  ultim- 
ately settle  anything,  I  wish  to  call  your  at- 
tention to  the  views  of  a  few  distinguished 
scientific  men  ;  and  I  will  not  confine  my  selec- 
tion to  those  who  occupy  one  side.  You  can 
take  them  for  what  they  are  worth. 

A  famous  French  astronomer,  Lalande,  gives 
expression  to  this  idea  :  I  have  swept  the  heav- 
ens with  my  telescope,  and  I  find  no  trace  of 
God.  Does  that  seem  to  you  a  wise  saying  ? 
It  seems  to  me  one  of  the  silliest  of  which  any 
sane  man  could  possibly  be  guilty.  Suppose 
a  physician  should  take  a  human  brain,  and 
study  it  carefully  with  a  microscope,  and,  when 
he  was  through,  say,  as  though  it  was  a  con- 
clusive statement  and  really  meant  something, 
that  he  nowhere  discovered  a  thought,  that  he 
never  came  across  an  idea.  Suppose  it  were 
Shakespeare's  brain,  and  he  did  not  find  Ham- 
let or  Ophelia  or  Lear,  would  it  be  wise  for  a 
man  to  utter  a  conclusion  like  that  ? 


1 84  Life's  Dark  Problems 

Moleschott,  another  famous  scientist,  uttered 
a  phrase  which  has  been  regarded  by  many  as 
a  remarkable  statement.  He  says :  No  phos- 
phorus, no  thought, — as  if  in  phosphorus  he 
had  found  an  explanation  of  thought  !  his  idea 
being  that,  unless  there  is  phosphorus  in  the 
composition  of  the  brain,  the  brain  could  not 
be  efficient  as  an  organ  of  thinking.  What  of 
it  ?  Is  that  wise  ?  It  seems  to  me,  again,  one 
of  the  silliest  sayings  possible  for  a  human 
being  to  utter.  It  means  absolutely  nothing. 
You  might  say  :  Without  a  dynamo,  no  elec- 
tricity, that  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a 
manifestation  of  electricity  without  a  dynamo. 
Consider  it  carefully.  It  means  nothing  at  all. 

The  great  champion  to-day  of  materialism,  a 
man  who  scouts  the  idea  that  there  is  any  God 
or  any  soul,  is  the  famous  German  scientist 
Haeckel.  He  is  a  brilliant  writer  and  intensely 
interesting.  I  remember  the  interest  with 
which  I  read  the  first  of  his  works  which  came 
into  my  hands,  The  History  of  Creation. 
He  published  a  book  last  year  which  had  great 
vogue,  and  recently  he  has  published  another. 
He  assumes  that  no  reasonable  man  can  be- 
lieve in  the  existence  of  the  soul.  He  claims 
that  mind  is  the  product  of  chemical  force. 
Does  he  prove  it  ?  We  ordinarily  suppose 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        185 

that  it  is  the  business  of  science  to  prove  its 
assertions,  and  yet  this  magnificent  statement 
is  a  pure  assumption.  What  does  Haeckel  do  ? 
He  admits  that  within  historic  times,  so  far  as 
we  know,  life  has  never  been  produced  from 
non-life.  He  admits  that  there  is  no  trace  to- 
day of  any  knowledge  by  which  chemistry 
could  account  for  consciousness.  What  does 
he  do  ?  Notice  the  airy  assumption.  He  tells 
us,  as  though  that  ought  to  be  satisfactory  to 
us,  and  as  though  we  ought  to  be  glad  to  get 
rid  of  God  and  the  human  soul  on  terms  like 
this,  that  we  must  remember  that  ages  ago 
chemical  conditions  on  the  planet  were  different 
from  what  they  are  now  !  That  is  the  entire 
reason  which  he  gives  us  for  surrendering  be- 
lief in  the  existence  of  the  soul.  I  am  perfectly 
ready  to  give  up  my  belief  in  the  existence  of 
the  soul,  only  I  want  an  adequate  reason  for 
it.  I  cannot  understand  how  anybody  should 
choose  to  believe  a  lie.  I,  at  any  rate,  wish  to 
know  what  sort  of  being  I  am.  If  I  am  a  soul, 
I  should  like  to  know  it,  not  simply  believe  it. 
If  I  am  not  a  soul,  I  should  like  to  know  that. 
I  would  choose  to  adjust  myself  to  reality,  and 
not  to  be  the  fool  all  my  life  long  of  a  false 
belief. 

Now  let  us  note  what  a  few  other  scientists 


1 86  Life's  Dark  Problems 

say.  Herbert  Spencer  was  an  agnostic;  yetj 
he  asserts  that  the  one  thing  we  know  more 
certainly  than  anything  else  in  the  world  is  the 
existence  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  energy  back 
of  all  phenomena  and  from  which  all  things 
proceed.  And  he  goes  on  to  tell  us,  further, 
that  this  energy  is  akin  to  us,  that  that  which 
wells  up  in  us  under  the  form  of  consciousness 
is  of  the  same  essence  as  this  infinite  and 
eternal  energy. 

What  does  Tyndall  tell  us  ?  I  do  not  for- 
get what  he  said  about  protoplasm  ;  but  he 
tells  us  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  explain 
consciousness  in  any  materialistic  way.  He 
says  that  the  gulf  between  matter,  or  force, 
and  consciousness  is  just  as  impassable  in  the 
light  of  modern  science  as  it  was  to  primeval 
man. 

What  does  Huxley  tell  us?  He,  again,  was 
an  agnostic.  He  was  discussing  Bikhner  and 
Berkeley.  He  said  that,  as  an  honourable  sci- 
entist, if  he  were  compelled  to  choose  between 
their  positions,  he  would  be  obliged  to  stand 
with  Berkeley  rather  than  with  Bikhner. 

Where  is  John  Fiske  ?  He  tells  us  that 
materialism  has  been  killed  by  rational 
scientific  study,  that  it  is  absurd  as  a 
philosophy. 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        187 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  one  of  the  most  noted 
English  scientists,  tells  us  we  shall  never 
understand  this  marvellous  world  and  the 
part  which  we  play  in  it  until  we  go  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  visible,  and  recognise  the 
spiritual  forces  which  fold  us  round.  These 
are  some  of  the  things  that  some  of  the 
great  scientific  men  of  the  modern  world  are 
saying. 

Now  consider  two  or  three  things  bearing 
on  the  nature  of  the  soul.  Of  course,  it  is  no 
part  of  my  plan  to  try  to  prove  it,  as  if  we 
were  dealing  with  it  by  itself.  I  only  offer  you 
a  few  considerations,  for  you  to  think  over, 
that  look  in  that  direction. 

In  order  to  get  mind  out  of  matter,  what 
does  Clifford  do  ?  And  what  does  Haeckel 
do  ?  Clifford  begins  to  talk  about  "  mind 
stuff  "  as  connected  with  every  particle  of  mat- 
ter, and  Haeckel  has  to  resort  to  "  atom  souls." 
Before  you  can  get  feeling  out  of  that  which 
has  no  feeling,  before  you  can  get  thought  out 
of  that  which  does  not  think,  before  you  can 
get  justice  out  of  that  which  knows  no  justice, 
before  you  can  get  righteousness  out  of  that 
which  is  morally  indifferent,  before  you  can  get 
the  qualities  which  make  a  man  out  of  matter, 
you  have  got  to  change  your  definition  of 


1 88  Life's  Dark  Problems 

matter.  In  other  words,  you  have  got  to  make 
matter  mean  what  mind  means,  which  gives  up 
the  whole  problem. 

Remember  that  the  only  thing  that  we  really 
know  first  hand  is  mind.  I  know  that  I  feel, 
I  know  that  I  think,  I  know  that  I  hope,  I 
know  that  I  fear,  I  know  that  I  aspire,  I  know 
that  I  love,  I  know  that  I  cry  for  justice,  I 
know  that  I  look  forward  to  the  righting  of 
the  wrongs  of  the  world.  These  are  all  first- 
hand knowledge  :  /  know  them.  Every  other 
item  of  human  knowledge  comes  to  us  from 
one  remove,  as  inference. 

Another  consideration  which  is  suggested. 
The  universe  has  been  climbing  through  a 
cosmic  process  that  reaches  back  and  down 
countless  millions  of  years.  It  has  climbed  up, 
passed  all  these  different  stages  until  man  ap- 
pears ;  and  man  has  been  climbing  up  from 
the  animal  into  the  heart,  the  brain,  the  spirit- 
ual nature,  until  we  have,  as  the  issue  and 
outcome  of  this  process,  the  most  distinguished 
and  noble  souls  of  which  history  gives  us  a 
glimpse.  Is  it  quite  believable,  quite  rational, 
that  the  power  which  has  been  doing  this  has 
no  purpose,  no  outcome,  nothing  to  justify  the 
age-long  process,  but  that  it  is  to  end  at  last 
in  a  puff  of  smoke,  in  nothing  at  all  ?  If  you 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        189 

can  believe  it,  you  can  believe  what  does  not 
seem  to  me  reasonable. 

I  touch  my  desk.  That  movement  is  mani- 
fested in  the  brain  ;  and  that  results  in  an  im- 
pulse that  runs  down  my  arm,  and  leads  me  to 
do  something  with  my  hand.  Somewhere 
coinciding  with  a  certain  stage  of  this  process 
was  a  thought,  a  feeling ;  and  yet  I  wish  you 
to  note  that  neither  the  thought  nor  the  feel- 
ing was  any  part  of  this  chain  of  motion. 
That  was  complete  as  a  physical  process,  with 
the  thought  and  the  feeling  left  out.  To  those 
who  can  feel  the  force  of  this  reasoning  it  is 
demonstrated  that  mind  is  something  entirely 
different  from  what  we  are  accustomed  to 
think  of  as  matter. 

John  Fiske,  in  his  Through  Nature  to  God, 
works  out  another  argument  which  I  suggest. 
Herbert  Spencer  tells  us  that  life  is  a  series  of 
adjustments  of  inner  relations  to  outer  rela- 
tions. When  you  find  some  living  thing  mak- 
ing an  appeal  by  its  activities  to  something 
supposed  to  be  outside,  you  may  be  almost 
certain  that  that  something  must  be  there. 
The  eye  came  in  response  to  light.  The  ear 
came  in  response  to  movements  which  were 
translated  into  sound.  So,  wherever  you  find 
the  life  force  reaching  out  in  some  direction, 


190  Life's  Dark  Problems 

as  if  toward  a  reality,  you  will  always  find  the 
reality. 

From  the  beginning  of  human  history,  men 
have  been  believing  that  they  were  in  the 
midst  of  invisible  spiritual  powers ;  and  the 
entire  religious  life  of  the  world  means  a  reach- 
ing out  toward  these.  Here  is  this  inner  re- 
lation of  the  heart,  the  thought,  the  life  of 
men,  adjusting  itself  to  a  supposed  outer  rela- 
tion. Now,  if  that  outer  relation  is  an  illusion, 
then  the  universe  is  one  huge  lie  from  centre 
to  circumference.  Here  is  a  reversal  of  the 
entire  process  of  evolution,  which  was  true  up 
to  the  time  when  men  appeared.  The  simple 
fact  that  man's  mightiest,  grandest  life  has 
been  developed  in  its  outreaching  appeal 
towards  the  divine  and  the  spiritual  is  scien- 
tific demonstration  that  these  are  not  mere 
dreams. 

There  is  another  suggestion.  As  we  study 
the  human  mind  as  embodied  in  any  single  indi- 
vidual, we  find  that  there  are  powers  only  par- 
tially understood  and  yet  which  transcend  the 
material,  transcend  the  body.  There  are  per- 
sons— and  this  is  perfectly  well  known  by  all 
competent  students — who  can  hear  without 
ears,  who  can  see  without  eyes,.  There  are 
cases  of  mental  communication — without  any 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        191 

of  the  ordinary  means  and  in  defiance  of  any 
recognised  methods — half-way  round  the  world. 
These  are  facts ;  and,  if  a  man  does  not  know 
that  they  are  facts,  he  is  simply  ignorant,  that 
is  all. 

One  thing  more.  Some  of  the  wise  scien- 
tific men  of  Europe  and  America  have  been 
engaged  in  a  systematic  study  of  psychical  re- 
search ;  and  whether  it  be  true  or  not,  they 
have  become  convinced  that  they  have  had 
communications  with  people  who  used  to  live 
here  and  who  have  passed  through  the  ex- 
perience which  we  call  death.  At  any  rate, 
the  opinions  of  great  and  distinguished  men 
who  have  made  careful  studies  in  this  direc- 
tion, and  who  assert  these  beliefs,  ought  to 
command  on  our  part  respectful  consideration. 

But  I  waive  all  that  one  side.  I  simply 
wish  to  say  this.  If  there  is  a  rational  ground 
for  belief  that  the  mind  is  something  different 
from  the  matter  of  which  the  body  is  com- 
posed, that  it  is  not  a  product  of  brain,  but 
may  exist  independent  of  it, — if,  I  say,  this  is 
a  reasonable  belief,  though  it  be  not  demon- 
strated as  true,  it  leaves  us  what  I  regard  as  a 
perfectly  satisfactory  explanation  of  this  dark 
problem  of  mental  disease  and  decay. 

What  are  the  causes  of  these  dark  facts  ? 


1 92  Life's  Dark  Problems 

The  same  that  we  found  for  most  of  the  evils 
that  afflict  human  life.  If  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse— that  is,  the  laws  of  God — were  per- 
fectly understood  and  perfectly  obeyed,  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  as  mental  disease  and 
decay,  with  the  exception  of  that  which  ac- 
companies the  gradual  growth  of  old  age  and 
the  transition  from  this  life  to  another.  All 
these  things  are  the  result  of  ignorance,  of 
passion,  of  vice,  of  disregard  of  the  laws  of 
God.  And  let  us  remember  constantly,  in 
passing,  that,  while  many  regard  this  as  the 
darkest  problem  of  all,  it  is  shorn  of  one  dif- 
ficulty, in  that  there  is  no  conscious  pain,  no 
sense  even  of  the  deprivation,  or  the  loss,  so 
that  all  that  sorrow  is  eliminated.  All  these 
things  are  simply  the  result  of  broken  law. 
We  bring  them  upon  ourselves,  or  we  inherit 
the  results  of  the  law-breaking  of  our  ancest- 
ors. They  might  have  been  prevented. 

The  only  way  conceivable  by  which  God 
might  have  prevented  these  evils  is  by  upset- 
ting and  overturning  the  order  of  His  own  uni- 
verse. If  He  interferes  to  prevent  the  natural 
and  necessary  results  of  the  breaking  of  His 
laws,  then  there  is  disorder  everywhere,  no 
possibility  of  study,  no  possibility  of  building 
up  individual  character,  no  possibility  of  know- 


Mental  Disease  and  Decay        193 

ledge  or  ordered  science,  no  far-reaching  plans 
for  attaining  any  results.  It  is  asking  a  good 
deal  of  Him  to  suppose  that,  to  ward  off  the 
results  of  our  own  actions,  our  own  ignorance, 
our  own  passion,  stupidity,  and  lack  of  sense, 
God  should  defeat  His  own  method  of  work- 
ing, and  introduce  disorder  in  this  magnificent 
universe  which  is  governed,  as  it  only  can  be 
according  to  any  rational  conception,  by  eternal 
and  changeless  laws. 

If  we  may  believe  in  a  soul,  if  we  may  be- 
lieve in  God,  if  we  may  recognise  the  fact 
that  all  these  evils  are  the  results  of  broken 
law,  if  we  may  see  clearly  that  by  obedience, 
by  study,  by  care,  all  these  things  may  be 
eliminated  and  outgrown,  even  here  on  earth ; 
if  we  may  believe  that  the  soul  goes  on  after 
the  fact  of  death,  and  that  somewhere  in 
God's  great  house  there  are  room  and  time  for 
study,  for  recovery,  for  development ;  if  there 
be  opportunity  somewhere  for  each  soul  to 
come  to  the  highest  and  noblest  of  which  it  is 
capable, — then  I  submit  that  this  great  dark 
problem  is  shot  through  with  light.  It  is 
only  as  if  the  sun  for  an  hour  were  clouded. 
The  cloud  does  not  touch  the  sua  It  does 
not  put  out  the  sun.  Suppose  a  soul  clouded 
for  what  is  only  an  hour,  a  moment, — if  we 


194  Life's  Dark  Problems 

may  believe  all  these  things,  and  nobody  can 
tell  us  that  we  may  not, — then  the  problem 
disappears,  and  hope  and  trust  take  its  place  ; 
and  we  need  only  to  wait  for  the  dawn  of 
God's  bright  and  blessed  and  eternal  day. 


CHAPTER  X 
IS  GOD  A  FATHER? 

AS  we  wake  up  to  consciousness  and  look 
around  us,  we  observe  two  great  funda- 
mental facts.  The  first  is  our  own  existence. 
We  are.  Of  that  we  are  conscious,  and  so, 
directly  and  inevitably,  certain.  But  we  recog- 
nise that  around  us,  outside  of  us,  there  is  a 
Somewhat,  a  Something,  or  a  Somebody  that 
is  not  ourselves.  What  is  this  which  is  not 
ourselves  ?  That  I  wish  to  ask  you  for  a  little 
time  seriously  to  consider.  The  plan  and  pur- 
pose I  have  in  mind  will  compel  me  to  run 
rapidly  over  a  great  many  separate  points.  I 
refer  those  of  you  who  care  to  go  into  the  mat- 
ter more  fully  to  two  of  my  books,  Belief 
in  God  and  The  Passing  and  Permanent  in 
Religion.  In  these  you  will  find  most  or  all 
of  these  points  treated  more  fully  and  ade- 
quately. 

We  have  found,  as  the  result  of  the  scien- 
tific investigation  of  the  modern  world,  that 
this  Being  which  is  not  ourselves  is  one  Being. 

195 


i96  Life's  Dark  Problems 

All  the  multiplicity  of  the  universe,  stars  and 
systems,  earth,  mountains,  trees,  and  rivers, — 
all  these  are  the  manifestation  of  one  Power, 
— unity  everywhere.  This  is  a  £/7zz'-verse. 

And  this  Being,  or  Power,  which  is  not  our- 
selves is  limitless  in  might.  So  far  as  we  can 
conceive  or  think,  we  are  justified  in  speaking 
of  it  as  an  infinite  and  almighty  Power. 

Next  it  is  a  power  that  manifests  itself  as 
perfect  order,  —  no  chaos,  no  disorder  any- 
where. Some  one  has  said  that  science  has 
failed  so  far  to  discover  one  imperfect  or  de- 
fective atom.  Perfect  order, — that  is  what  this 
Power  manifests  itself  as  being. 

In  the  next  place,  consider  carefully  as  to 
whether  or  not  I  am  justified  in  saying  that  it 
is  an  intelligent  Power.  Everywhere  every- 
thing moves  so  as  to  match  our  human  intellig- 
ence. It  is  intelligible ;  and  that  which  is 
intelligible  must,  I  submit,  be  the  manifesta- 
tion of  intelligence.  So  I  do  not  think  that  we 
go  too  far  in  saying  that  not  only  is  this  Power 
one,  mighty,  orderly,  but  that  it  is  an  intellig- 
ent Power. 

Now  let  us  take  the  next  step.  I  believe, 
not  in  the  old  sense  of  Paley  and  his  watch, 
but  in  a  larger  and  more  comprehensive  sense, 
that  we  can  trace  design.  Not  only  is  this  an 


Is  God  a  Father  ?  197 

orderly  Power,  it  is  a  power  pursuing  a  pur- 
pose. From  the  far-away  beginnings,  millions 
of  years  ago,  this  Power  has  trodden  a  path- 
way that  has  led  to  the  attainment  of  certain 
definite  ends.  It  has  reached  out  towards 
the  accomplishment  of  certain  things, — things 
which  an  adequate  intelligence  could  have  fore- 
seen thousands  of  years  ago.  To-day  we  can 
foresee  certain  things  which  are  promised  in 
the  future  and  towards  which  the  forces  that 
are  at  work  around  us  are  with  apparent  in- 
telligence and  purpose  leading. 

Not  only  is  it  a  purposing,  but  it  is  a  tran- 
scendent Power.  By  this  I  mean  that  it  is  larger 
than  any  thoughts  so  far  manifested.  It  fills 
the  visible  universe  ;  and  it  transcends  it  on 
every  hand.  How  do  I  know  ?  I  know  be- 
cause this  Power  is  working  towards  certain 
definite  ends  which  can  be  discerned.  Those 
ends  are  not  yet  attained  ;  but  we  can  see  that 
the  universe  is  in  process  towards  them.  The 
argument  is  precisely  as  simple  as  this.  You 
go  out  into  an  orchard  in  the  spring  or  in  mid- 
summer. The  tree  has  put  forth  buds.  They 
are  unfolding  ;  and  you  feel  perfectly  certain 
that  there  is  a  power  here  adequate  to  the 
complete  unfolding  of  those  buds  into  finished 
leaves.  You  feel  perfectly  certain  that  there 


198  Life's  Dark  Problems 

is  a  power  here  that  by  and  by  will  open  into 
blossoms.  And,  when  the  tiny  beginnings  of 
the  fruit  are  set,  you  feel  perfectly  certain  that 
here  is  a  power  that  can  develop  and  which  is 
going  to  develop  this  fruit,  and  by  and  by 
hang  it  on  the  boughs,  ripe  and  rich  and  lus- 
cious. Now  we  see  everywhere  in  this  uni- 
verse around  us  the  beginnings  of  certain 
things  which  are  not  yet  complete  ;  and,  as 
we  look  back  and  down  the  past  and  see  how 
there  were  forms  of  buds  and  blossoms  in  dif- 
ferent stages  of  the  world's  evolution  that  have 
been  unfolded  and  completed,  are  we  not  logic- 
ally and  scientifically  justified  in  saying  that 
the  power  which  was  manifested  there,  say  a 
million  years  ago,  was  more  than  that  million- 
years-ago  manifestation,  because  it  has  come 
to  more  since  ?  And  so  are  we  not  justified  in 
looking  ahead  towards  the  future,  and  saying 
that  this  power  which  has  been  moving  in  an 
orderly  fashion  towards  certain  attainments  in 
the  past  is  capable  of  attaining  the  things 
which  are  promised  in  the  buds  and  blossoms 
of  to-day  ? 

It  is  not  only  a  power  with  a  purpose  :  it  is 
a  righteous  power,  or,  to  quote  the  classic 
phrase  of  Matthew  Arnold,  "  a  power  not  our- 
selves which  makes  for  righteousness."  It  has 


Is  God  a  Father?  199 

to.  For  what  does  this  mean  ?  It  means 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  that  the  uni- 
verse is  in  favour  of  the  keeping  of  its  own 
laws ;  and  the  keeping  of  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse means  perfect  Tightness  in  every  direc- 
tion, and  up  in  the  realm  of  ethics  perfect 
righteousness.  The  universe,  then,  is  a  right- 
eous universe  ;  for,  if  all  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse could  be  perfectly  kept,  the  result  would 
be  perfect  in  every  department  of  life, — in  the 
lower  world  around  us,  in  the  human  world,  in 
the  individual, — and  man  would  be  perfect  in 
body,  perfect  in  mind,  perfect  in  heart,  perfect 
in  his  aesthetic  nature,  perfect  as  grouped  into 
society,  perfect  as  engaged  in  business,  per- 
fect as  manifested  in  forms  of  government.  It 
would  be  a  perfect  world  if  the  laws  of  God 
were  only  kept  perfectly.  This  means  that  the 
power  that  is  manifested  in  the  universe  is  a 
righteous  power. 

Take  another  step.  Righteousness  has 
about  it  something  hard  and  unfeeling.  It  is 
law  ;  it  is  obedience  to  law.  It  may  not  have 
much  feeling  about  it,  much  intention  of  good- 
ness. I  believe  we  are  justified  in  going  a 
step  farther,  and  saying  that  not  only  is  the 
power  manifested  in  this  universe  a  righteous 
power,  but  a  good  power,  good  in  our  human 


200  Life's  Dark  Problems 

sense  of  goodness.  Let  me  offer  one  or  two 
suggestions  on  this  point.  The  mere  fact 
that  society  exists  is  scientific  demonstration 
that  the  power  manifested  in  the  universe  is 
a  good  power.  Why  ?  Those  forces  that 
keep  men  and  women  together  in  society,  the 
cohesive  forces,  the  centripetal  forces,  are 
forces  of  sympathy  and  helpfulness, — forces 
that  we  speak  of  as  good.  The  forces  that 
tend  to  disintegrate,  to  disrupt,  to  separate 
and  destroy  society,  are  forces  of  antagonism 
and  hate,  bad  forces, — what  we  call  evil.  There- 
fore, the  mere  fact  that  society  exists  proves 
that  the  good  is  in  the  majority,  to  say  the 
least,  or  it  would  not  exist.  The  simple  fact 
that  from  the  far-away  beginning  we  can  note 
that  there  has  been  at  least  slow  improve- 
ment, century  by  century,  age  by  age,  is  still 
further  demonstration  that  this  power  is  in 
the  majority.  It  gives  us  a  sure  confidence 
that  this  power  by  and  by  will  win,  will  con- 
trol and  shape  the  destinies  of  the  race.  Not 
a  poet  has  sung,  not  a  seer  has  seen  in  vision, 
not  a  prophet  has  foretold,  anything  high  and 
sweet  and  fine  which  is  not  purely  rational  in 
the  light  of  the  history  of  the  race. 

It  is  a  good  power,  then,  which  is  at  work 
in    this    universe.      You    can    emphasise   this 


Is  God  a  Father  ?  201 

position,  if  you  wish,  by  recurring  to  the  point 
I  just  made  in  regard  to  righteousness ;  for  it 
means  as  much  here  as  it  did  there.  God  is 
in  favour,  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case  must 
be  in  favour,  of  keeping  His  own  laws  ;  and 
the  keeping  of  His  own  laws  results  in  good- 
ness, in  what  we  in  the  human  sense  of  that 
word  mean  by  goodness.  The  power,  then, 
manifested  in  the  universe  is  a  good  power. 

I  take  another  step.  I  believe  that  it  is  a 
conscious  power,  not  a  blind  force.  Consider 
for  a  moment :  a  power  that  is  one,  a  power 
that  is  orderly,  a  power  that  is  intelligent,  a 
power  that  is  following  certain  definite  lines 
toward  certain  definite  ends  so  as  to  force 
upon  us  the  conviction  that  it  is  a  purposing 
power,  a  power  that  is  righteous,  that  is  good, 
must  also  be  a  power  that  is  conscious.  AH 
these  other  qualities  presuppose  conscious- 
ness, and  force  us  to  think  of  it  as  a  rational 
necessity.  Consciousness  exists  as  a  quality 
of  the  highest  being  that  we  know  of  in  the 
range  of  humanity, — not  only  consciousness, 
but  ^^-consciousness.  Animals  are  conscious  : 
only  man,  so  far  as  the  inhabitants  of  this 
world  are  concerned,  is  self-conscious.  Self- 
consciousness,  then,  the  ability  to  think  and  say 
"  I," — this  exists  as  the  highest  manifestation 


202  Life's  Dark  Problems 

so  far  of  the  evolution  of  this  visible  uni- 
verse around  us.  Whatever  is  manifested 
must  exist  in  that  which  manifests.  Or,  to 
put  it  another  way,  that  which  manifests  must 
at  least  be  equal  to  whatever  is  manifested. 
God,  then,  this  Power,  if  not  conscious  in  the 
sense  in  which  we  use  it  of  ourselves,  is  at 
least  as  high,  as  much,  as  comprehensive,  as 
consciousness.  In  other  words,  He  is  not  less 
than  conscious.  If  there  is  something  in  His 
consciousness  different  from  ours,  it  means 
that  He  is  more  than  conscious. 

This  leads  to  the  next  step.  This  power  is 
personal.  A  good  many  people,  not  think- 
ing quite  what  it  implies,  are  apt  to  suppose 
that  they  are  accepting  the  results  of  modern 
knowledge  when  they  say  that  the  infinite 
cannot  be  personal.  I  am  told  every  little 
while  :  "  I  believe  in  God,  but  not  in  a  personal 
God."  It  is  a  personal  God  or  no  God.  The 
word  "  God  "  has  no  meaning  if  you  leave  out 
person.  What  does  personality  imply  ?  Not 
what  we  mean  necessarily  when  we  speak  of 
each  other  as  persons.  It  does  not  mean  that 
God  is  an  outlined  being,  located  somewhere, 
and  that  He  is  limited.  The  essential  thing  in 
personality  is  consciousness  ;  a  being  who  can 
say  "  I,"  think  "  I,"  is  a  person.  In  that  sense 


Is  God  a  Father  ?  203 

I  believe  that  God  is  not  only  conscious,  but 
personal.  Here  we  can  say  of  personality 
just  what  we  have  been  saying  of  conscious- 
ness. If  God  is  not  personal,  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  that  word  as  we  use  it  of  each  other, 
then  certainly  He  is  not  something  less;  he  is 
something  unspeakably  and  infinitely  more, 
something  that  includes  that  while  it  tran- 
scends it. 

In  a  conversation  with  Herbert  Spencer  one 
day  he  said  to  me  one  or  two  things  which  at 
that  time  were  not  published  ;  they  may  have 
been  since.  He  said  that,  while  we  may  not 
think  of  the  Power  manifested  in  the  universe 
as  conscious  and  personal  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  are,  we  have  a  right  to  suppose  that  it  is 
something  as  much  above  and  beyond  what 
we  mean  by  personality  and  consciousness 
as  these  are  above  and  beyond  vegetable 
growths. 

Conscious,  personal,  our  Father.  Stop  and 
think  a  moment.  That  Power  that  is  not  our- 
selves which  has  produced  us  is,  of  course,  our 
Father.  If  it  is  mere  matter,  still  it  is  our 
Father ;  if  it  is  dirt,  it  is  our  Father ;  if  it  is 
force,  it  is  our  Father.  Whatever  you  find 
the  nature  of  this  universe  around  us  to  be, 
still  it  is  our  Father.  I  believe  that  it  is  order, 


204  Life's  Dark  Problems 

intelligence,  purpose,  righteousness,  goodness, 
consciousness,  personality,  and  Father.  Father 
includes  all  these.  Then  what  ? 

We  must  remember  that  our  highest  and 
finest  thoughts  must  fall  infinitely  short  of  the 
reality.  Wise  was  the  old  writer  who  said : 
"  For,  as  the  heavens  are  high  above  the  earth, 
so  are  my  thoughts  higher  than  your  thoughts, 
and  my  ways  than  your  ways."  We  cannot 
expect  to  comprehend  the  infinite.  Think  a 
moment.  If  we  could  comprehend  God,  it 
would  mean  that  He  would  be  annihilated. 
He  would  be  no  God  that  a  finite  being  could 
completely  comprehend.  Fortunate  for  us, 
then,  is  it  that  God  does  move  in  a  mysterious 
way,  and  that  we  are  wrapped  in  a  cloud,  and 
that  His  face  is  oftentimes  hid  from  us.  Were 
He  not  infinite,  we  could  not  believe  in  Him  or 
trust  in  Him. 

What,  then,  shall  we  talk  about  being  an- 
thropomorphic and  try  not  to  be  ?  There  are 
a  great  many  persons  who  stumble  over  this 
word  "  anthropomorphic."  What  would  they 
have  ?  We  are  antkropoi, — we  are  men.  We 
must  think  as  men,  feel  as  men,  reason  as  men. 
The  world  has  advanced  in  its  ability  to  think 
and  feel  and  reason.  We  have  taken  wonder- 
ful steps  beyond  the  far-away  beginning.  We 


Is  God  a  Father  ?  205 

have  higher  and  finer  thoughts  about  God  than 
our  ancestors  had  ;  but  we  cannot  escape  our- 
selves. To  try  not  to  be  anthropomorphic  is 
to  try  to  be  something  less  than  that  and  some- 
thing poorer.  If  we  cease  to  think  as  men, 
and  if  we  cannot  think  as  something  more  than 
men,  it  must  be  in  terms  that  are  less  and  lower 
than  man.  Let  us  not  be  afraid  of  anthropo- 
morphism ;  only  let  us  always  bear  in  mind  that 
our  human  thoughts  are  infinitely  and  unspeak- 
ably below  the  reality,  that  God  is  something 
not  less,  but  something  more  than  we  can 
imagine,  something  higher  and  something 
better. 

And  now  let  us  think  for  a  little  while 
of  God  as  our  Father,  with  the  question  per- 
petually in  mind  as  to  what  you  would  have 
Him  do  different  from  what  He  has  been  doing 
and  is  doing,  if  you  could  have  your  way.  If 
we  take  our  imaginations  and  our  fancies  and 
look  them  squarely  in  the  face,  we  shall  find 
that  most  of  them  are  unreasonable.  What 
would  we  have  God  do  different  from  what  He 
is  doing,  if  we  could  have  our  way  ? 

Perhaps  the  first  thing  that  some  one  would 
say  is  that  he  would  like  to  have  a  revelation 
of  Him  that  is  perfectly  clear  and  indubitable. 
But  we  have  one.  Only  we  have  not  been 


2o6  Life's  Dark  Problems 

able  to  read  more  than  a  few  sentences  of  it 
There  is  an  infallible  revelation  of  God  in  His 
universe,  written  on  every  atom  of  it,  mani- 
fested in  all  its  laws.  The  kind  of  revelations 
the  people  have  imagined  in  the  past  have 
failed  them,  every  one.  A  book  revelation,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  cannot  possibly  be  in- 
fallible. We  have  one  that  our  fathers  thought 
was  infallible.  Has  it  ever  proved  an  infallible 
guide  ?  People  read  it  differently,  have  quar- 
relled over  its  texts,  have  misunderstood  its 
significance  in  every  direction.  It  has  not  been 
an  infallible  guide  to  anybody,  even  to  those 
who  so  regarded  it.  They  have  been  separated 
into  factions,  quarrelling  with  each  other,  im- 
prisoning each  other,  burning  each  other  at 
the  stake.  It  has  not  been  an  infallible  guide, 
then.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  it  is  impos- 
sible to  put  infallibility  into  words.  The  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  is  as  bald  and 
bare  a  statement  of  facts  and  principles  as 
you  can  frame ;  and  yet  political  parties  have 
always  been  fighting  over  its  interpretation. 
Language  changes.  What  a  book  means  to 
one  age  it  does  not  mean  to  the  next  age.  It 
would  have  to  be  in  some  one  language, — this 
infallible  book, — and  that  would  have  to  be 
translated ;  and,  then,  you  would  have  to 


Is  God  a  Father  ?  207 

have  an  infallible  translation  and  infallible 
interpreters.  God  could  not  reveal  Himself 
infallibly  in  that  way. 

Suppose  He  sent  a  prophet,  some  one  to 
speak  for  Him  ;  how  could  he  prove  himself  to 
be  from  God  ?  Thousands  of  people  have 
come,  and  claimed  to  be  His  messengers.  Why 
should  we  believe  this  one  ?  If  a  man  came 
to-day  and  walked  the  streets,  and  told  us  that 
he  was  a  messenger  from  God,  the  chances  are 
that  we  should  shut  him  up  in  an  asylum,  and 
that  we  should  be  right  in  doing  so.  How 
could  he  prove  himself  an  infallible  messenger 
from  God  ?  He  could  only  say  so.  Perhaps 
he  could  claim  to  work  miracles.  Should  we 
believe  him  ?  If  he  did  work  miracles  and  do 
what  no  man  could  do,  if  he  were  capable  of 
abrogating  one  or  any  of  God's  laws,  if  he 
came  to  contradict  what  God  is  accustomed  to 
do,  contradict  His  method  of  working,  would 
that  prove  that  he  was  from  God  ? 

Suppose  God  should  write  across  the  sky, 
"  I  am  God,"  who  would  believe  that  ?  It 
would  be  open  to  every  one  to  say  that  it  just 
happened  so.  The  configuration  would  be  no 
more  remarkable  than  the  constellations  that 
we  see  everywhere.  And,  then,  it  would  only 
be  in  one  language,  and  it  would  have  to  be 


208  Life's  Dark  Problems 

translated ;  and  you  could  always  doubt  the 
translation,  and  it  would  mean  nothing  as  to 
the  character  or  love  or  care  and  kindness  of 
God. 

Look  at  it  in  any  way  you  will,  and  I  believe 
you  will  be  compelled  to  come  rationally  to  the 
conclusion  that  God  has  revealed  Himself  and 
is  revealing  Himself  to  us  in  the  clearest  and 
best  of  all  possible  ways. 

Look  at  it  in  another  aspect.  We  can  go  to 
our  human  fathers  and  see  them,  and  sit  down 
by  them  and  present  our  requests,  and  reason 
with  them  and  beg  them  to  do  such  and  such 
things.  We  cannot  go  to  God  in  that  sense. 
We  cannot  find  some  spot  in  the  universe 
where,  as  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Job  wished, 
he  might  come  to  the  foot  of  God's  seat.  We 
cannot  talk  with  Him,  and  expect  Him  to  an- 
swer our  questions  as  a  human  father  might. 
This  implication  that  we  might  and  ought  to 
is  in  the  minds  of  millions  of  intelligent  people 
to-day.  If  God  was  located  somewhere,  and 
we  could  go  to  Him  and  have  fifteen  minutes 
to  talk  over  things,  what  would  that  mean  ? 
It  would  take  millions  and  millions  of  years 
for  us  to  get  our  turn. 

And,  then,  what  do  we  expect  from  our 
prayers  different  from  what  we  get  ?  Do  you 


Is  God  a  Father?  209 

suppose  that  the  All-Father  is  going  to  be  par- 
tial ?  Would  you  like  to  believe  that  He  will 
help  this  one  and  not  that  one,  listening  to  a 
prayer  of  a  heart-broken  mother  here  and 
letting  thousands  of  mothers  suffer  elsewhere  ? 
Would  you  like  to  believe  that  of  Him  ?  I 
should  have  no  respect  for  Him  if  I  thought 
He  would  do  a  special  thing  for  me  that  He 
would  not  do  for  a  million  of  His  children. 
Suppose  you  tell  Him  that  you  have  a  ship 
sailing  east,  and  you  want  the  wind  to  blow 
favourable  for  its  voyage;  but  another  of  his 
children  has  a  ship  sailing  west,  and  another 
north,  and  another  south.  What  will  He  do 
about  it  ?  Will  He  interfere  with  the  regular 
order  of  His  winds,  or  will  He  let  us  study 
them  out  and  see  how  we  can  adapt  ourselves 
to  His  changeless,  wise,  and  blessed  laws  ? 
God  hears  and  answers  prayer,  I  believe.  He 
is  nearer  to  us  than  the  breath  we  breathe. 
Every  wish,  every  unuttered  desire,  finds  echo 
in  His  infinite  heart,  in  His  tender  care.  But 
Jesus  told  us  wisely  a  good  many  years  ago 
that  the  most  blessed  prayer  we  could  utter  is, 
"  Thy  will  be  done."  The  wisest  thing  is  to 
find  out  God's  methods  and  ways,  and  adapt 
ourselves  to  them. 

Turn  to  another  consideration.     Would  you, 


210  Life's  Dark  Problems 

if  you  could,  have  God  interfere  all  the 
time  to  prevent  you  from  suffering  when 
you  have  broken  His  laws  in  the  physical 
world  ?  I  have  considered  that  matter  al- 
ready at  length.  It  would  be  the  destruction 
of  the  universe  if  we  could  have  our  little, 
petty,  selfish  way  in  regard  to  matters  like 
this. 

Would  you  have  Him,  if  you  could,  save 
you  from  suffering  when  you  have  done  wrong, 
moral  wrong  ?  If  God  was  unkind  enough  to 
take  that  attitude  towards  you,  it  would  be 
your  immediate  and  eternal  destruction.  God 
is  kind  towards  you  in  making  every  wrong 
road  hard,  and  in  leaving  open  only  the  one  on 
which  shines  the  light  that  grows  more  and 
more  towards  the  dawning  of  His  eternal  day. 
God  was  never  so  kind  as  when  He  made  this 
universe  an  impracticable  and  ultimately  im- 
possible place  for  moral  wrong,  because  that 
means  that  sometime  and  somewhere  we  shall 
be  driven  into  the  right,  driven  to  His  feet, 
driven  to  His  arms,  driven  to  the  development 
in  us  of  that  which  is  highest  and  finest  and 
most  godlike  and  best. 

Think  it  over,  then,  carefully.  What  would 
you  have  God  do,  if  He  was  your  Father  in 
heaven,  different  from  what  He  has  been  doing 


Is  God  a  Father?  211 

and  is  doing  now?  I  confess  frankly,  that 
after  years  of  careful  study  I  do  not  know  one 
single  thing  in  this  direction  that  I  would  dare 
to  change  if  I  could  do  it  with  a  turn  of  my 
hand.  I  would  not  venture  to  interfere  with 
the  working  of  this  infinite  and  eternal  Power 
that  I  believe  to  be  all-wise,  all-loving,  all- 
tender,  all-fatherly,  all-motherly.  For  what 
has  He  done? 

He  has  placed  us  here  on  this  earth  in  His 
great  universe.  We  are  surrounded  on  every 
hand  by  His  presence.  He  is  working  in  us, 
through  us,  above  us,  and  below  us,  and  all 
around  us..  "  In  Him  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being."  "  Closer  is  He  than  breath- 
ing, and  nearer  than  hands  and  feet,"  as 
Tennyson  says.  These  forces  are  working 
perpetually  according  to  wise,  eternal,  change- 
less laws.  God  is  manifesting  Himself,  His 
power,  His  wisdom,  His  love,  through  every 
movement  in  the  universe. 

Here  we  are,  then.  We  have  a  solid  place 
on  which  to  stand  — solid  enough  so  that  we 
can  feel  something  real  under  our  feet.  We 
have  light  enough  so  that  we  can  see  to  take 
the  next  step  ahead.  There  is  no  man  or 
woman  in  the  world  to-day  who  is  really  doubt- 
ful in  his  or  her  mind  as  to  that  which  is  right 


212  Life's  Dark  Problems 

to  think  and  feel  and  say  and  do.  We  have  a 
part  here  in  this  world  to  work  out  for  our- 
selves, an  opportunity  for  character.  We  could 
not  work  out  and  develop  our  characters  if  we 
were  interfered  with  all  the  time.  We  can  do 
it  best  in  just  the  kind  of  world  in  which  we 
are.  We  have  motives  and  incentives  enough 
on  every  hand.  We  have  the  light  of  the  im- 
mortal hope  leading  us  on.  I  believe  that  this 
light  of  hope  is  growing  into  a  certainty.  That 
means  that  there  is  to  be  opportunity,  scope, 
and  range  somewhere  for  every  soul  to  come 
to  everything  of  which  it  is  capable.  Could 
you  ask  a  father  to  do  anything  more,  any- 
thing better  than  that  for  every  one  of  his 
children  ? 

I  believe  that  God  is  all  that  we  could  pos- 
sibly put  into  words  of  tenderness  and  good- 
ness. He  is  not  only  Father ;  He  is  Mother. 
All  the  sympathy,  all  the  pity,  all  the  willing- 
ness to  help,  all  the  loving-kindness  that  you 
find  manifested  in  any  human  heart  or  life,  is 
only  a  partial  shadowing  forth  of  that  which  is 
infinite  in  Him.  Where  did  the  mother-heart 
come  from  but  from  the  mother-heart  in  Him  ? 
Where  did  the  father-heart  come  from  but 
from  the  father-heart  in  Him  ?  Where  did  any 
of  these  fine  and  high  and  sweet  things  come 


Is  God  a  Father?  213 

from  but  from  Him?  I  believe  that  God 
suffers.  It  is  not  part  of  the  infinite  and 
divine  blessedness  to  be  insensitive  to  the  pain 
of  His  children.  "The  whole  creation  groan- 
eth  and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until  now," 
says  the  apostle ;  and  I  believe  that  that  in- 
cludes our  Father  in  scope  and  range,  only  His 
suffering  is  not  hopeless,  like  ours.  A  mother 
sits  with  a  little  child  playing  at  her  feet,  and 
the  child  bursts  out  in  an  anguish  of  tears  be- 
cause she  has  broken  her  doll ;  and  the  mother 
takes  her  up  in  her  arms  and  comforts  her. 
She  suffers,  but  not  as  the  child  suffers ;  for 
she  knows  that  it  is  a  petty  thing,  and  that  it 
lasts  but  a  little  while,  and  that  she  can  have 
another  doll,  and  that  she  will  even  outgrow  the 
time  when  she  cares  for  dolls  at  all,  and  will 
love  something  higher  and  better  in  their 
place.  So  God  can  fold  to  His  infinite  and 
tender  heart  all  the  sufferings  and  sorrows  of 
His  children  in  all  the  worlds,  and  yet  see  the 
light  and  the  hope  and  the  joy  and  the  glory 
that  close  them  all  round,  and  into  which  they 
are  to  issue  by  and  by.  We  are  like  little 
children  who  wake  up  out  of  a  bad  dream  in 
the  night,  and  cry  in  terror,  or  in  the  shadows 
see  distorted  images  of  familiar  things  until  we 
are  afraid ;  but,  as  the  mother  hovers  close  by 


214  Life's  Dark  Problems 

and  waits  to  comfort  and  soothe,  so  I  believe 
that  God  hovers  over  the  cradle  of  every  one 
of  His  undeveloped  children,  and  that,  by  and 
by,  when  the  dawn  rises,  we  shall  see  and  un- 
derstand. 

So,  blinking  none  of  the  facts,  disregarding 
no  ugly  reality,  looking  all  the  dark  problems 
fairly  in  the  face,  I  believe  we  are  rationally 
justified  in  saying,  "  Our  Father  in  heaven  ; 
our  Father  on  earth ;  our  Father  in  hell ;  our 
Father  here  and  everywhere  and  always." 
"  Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children,  so  the 
Lord  pitieth,"  not  alone  "  them  that  fear  Him," 
— I  think  we  can  be  wiser  than  the  old  writer, 
— He  pitieth  all  His  creatures  that  can  think 
or  feel. 


INDEX 


Adam,  the  unfair  probation 
of,  30,  31;  the  responsibil- 
ity given  by  theology  to, 

33 
Agnostic,    point   of   view   of 

the,  5;  Spencer  as  an,  186; 

Huxley  an,  186 
Angels,  the  existence  of,  128 
Animals,     suffering     of,    71; 

mutual  destruction  of,  73; 

advantage  of  suffering  to, 

74 
Arnold,  Matthew,  quotation 

from,  59;  classic  phrase  of, 

198 
Atheist,  point  of  view  of  the, 

4,    5  ;     Gautama    as    an, 

1 80 
Augustine,  St.,  theology  of, 

146;  John  Calvin  and,  147 

B 

Bible,  the,  See  Old  Testa- 
ment and  New  Testament. 

Buddhism,  the  founder  of, 
180 

Burial,  ideas  of,  137;  Soc- 
rates and, 138 

Byron,  Lord,  quotation  from, 
90 


Calvin,  John,  theology  of  St. 
Augustine  and,  147 

Cause  and  effect,  conditions 
governing,  47,  48;  univer- 
sal law  of,  49 ;  examples  of, 
53 ;  as  exemplified  by  pain, 
81,  86;  other  examples  of, 
163,  164 

Collyer,  Robert,  conditions 
of  physical  life,  140 

Conscience,  first  existence  of, 
122  the  world  without, 
125;  cowardly,  140;  con- 
victions Of,  211 

Consciousness,  basis  of,  85; 
temporary  departure  of, 
177;  impossibility  of  ac- 
counting for,  1 86;  first, 
195  ;  not  a  blind  force, 
201 ;  personal,  202 ;  Herbert 
Spencer's  ideas  about,  203 


Death,  advantages  to  ani- 
mals of  sudden,  74,  122; 
Livingston's  testimony  re- 
garding, 74;  the  evidence 
of  Mr.  Whymper,  74;  Vic- 
tor Hugo  on,  112;  exist- 
ence from  the  beginning 


215 


2l6 


Index 


Death — Continued 

of,  121 ;  teaching  of  Christ- 
ian theology  about,  133; 
the  fear  of,  134;  prema- 
ture, 135;  Milton's  picture 
of,  138;  Greek  symbol  for, 
139;  Hamlet  on,  139;  con- 
ditions of,  144;  as  progress, 
148;  psychical  research  re- 
garding, 191 

Discord,  the  need  of,  84 

E 

Evil,  ideas  regarding,  6;  Old 
Testament  reason  for,  7; 
punishment  of,  9;  doc- 
trine of,  7;  ignorance  of 
Job  about,  6;  spirits  of, 
25,  35;  origin  of,  29;  in- 
adequacy of  theology  re- 
garding, 30,  32 ;  the  casting 
out  of,  35;  the  teaching  of 
Hebrews  on,  37;  modern 
belief  in,  41;  ministerial 
teachings  about,  42;  as 
effect  of  cause,  81;  moral, 
114;  traditions  of,  121; 
original,  123;  inequalities 
in  the  punishment  of,  162 

Evolution,  belief  in,  119; 
processes  of,  123;  neces- 
sity of  death  to,  148 


Faith,  the  desirability  of  hav- 
ing, 153 

Fiske,  John,  the  theory  of, 
1 86 ;  Through  Nature  to  God 
by,  189 


Force,  blind,  5;  control  by, 
25;  ideas  regarding,  26; 
Hebrew  disbelief  in,  27; 
possible  existence  of,  154; 
natural,  164;  conscious- 
ness of  the  world  not  a, 
201 ;  as  God,  202 


Genesis,  first  chapters  of,  7; 
place  in  the  Bible,  7 ;  place 
in  Hebrew  history,  28;  be- 
lief of  the  Hebrew  in,  29 

Golden  Age,  the  teaching  of 
Greeks  and  Romans  about, 
116 

Goodness,  in  the  world,  2; 
God's,  3;  Job's  explana- 
tion of,  6;  testimony  of  the 
Psalms  to,  7;  Milton's  idea 
of,  3;  Pope's  idea  of,  3; 
Mill's  idea  of,  4;  the  the- 
ist  and,  5;  reward  of,  9; 
spirits  of,  26,  35;  relation 
of  pain  to,  68,  83;  the  sto- 
ic's idea  of,  104;  achieve- 
ment of,  129 

Gray,  opinion  regarding  child- 
hood, 91;  quotation  from, 
92 

Growth,  definition  of,  108; 
Paul's  teaching  about,  109 ; 
the  world's  process  of ,  1 1 1 ; 
the  idea  of  Victor  Hugo 
regarding,  112;  death  as  a 
condition  of,  148 

H 

Haeckel,  The  History  of 
Creation  by,  184 


Index 


217 


Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert, 
on  religion,  156 

Hebrew,  the,  creed  of,  27,  28; 
Babylonian  influence  on, 
28;  belief  in  time  of  Christ 
of,  35;  history  of,  117 

Hebrews,  The  Book  of, 
teaching  in,  37 

Heredity,  law  of,  61 

Holmes, Oliver  Wendell,  story 
in  poem  by,  109 

Hugo,  Victor,  the  outlook  of, 
112 

Huxley,  an  honourable  scien- 
tist, 1 86 

I 

Ideals,  as  applied  to  earthly 
conditions,  44,  45 ;  the  fals- 
ity of,  47;  fugitive,  96,  98; 
the  reason  we  have,  98; 
the  growth  of,  100,  101; 
the  advantage  of  not  hav- 
ing, 106;  the  meaning  of, 
no,  113 

Immortality,  the  desire  for, 
179 

Insanity,  a  theory  of,  180 

J 

Job,  the  Book  of,  place  in 
Hebrew  literature  and  re- 
ligion, 5;  help  in,  6;  time 
of  the  writing  of,  10;  a 
poem,  13—14;  theological 
value  of,  24 

Job,  his  ignorance  regarding 
the  Garden  of  Eden,  6; 
popular  reward  and  pun- 
ishment in  time  of,  9,  10; 


the  story  of ,  14,  15,  i6;the 
afflictions  of,  17;  God's 
atonement  to,  19;  the  cry 
of,  179 

Judgments,  of  God,  so-called, 
162;  real,  163;  natural 
forces  as,  164;  examples  of, 
165 ;  the  will  of  man  as  ap- 
plied to,  169 
L 

Lalande,  saying  by,  183 

Law,  scientific  meaning  of 
the  word,  47,  48;  natural, 
48,  49;  understanding  of 
natural,  55,  57;  of  hered- 
ity, 61;  of  compensation, 
64;  processes  of,  66;  disre- 
gard of  physical,  86;  man's 
co-operation  with  natural, 
174;  in  the  universe,  200 

Lessing,  saying  about  truth 
by,  102 

Life,  discrepancies  in,  n,  12, 
13;  wrong  conditions  of, 
39,  59;  attitudes  toward, 
52,  57,  58;  value  of  the 
inequalities  in,  62-63; 
compensations  of,  64 ; 
processes  of,  66;  so-called 
lower  grades  of,  76;  in- 
completeness of,  89,  90; 
Mr.  Underwood's  estimate, 
91;  Gray's  verses  on,  92; 
transitoriness  of,  92; 
Wordsworth  on,  93;  joys 
of  natural,  141;  alterna- 
tives to,  142;  results  of 
perpetual,  144;  as  conceal- 
ment, 150 


218 


Index 


Livingston,  expectation  of 
death  by,  74 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  verse 
by,  95 

Louis  XIV.,  saying  of,  168 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  mean- 
ing of  poem  on  goldfish  by, 

150 

M 

Materialism,  theory  of,  180; 
opinions  of  certain  scien- 
tists regarding,  183;  ab- 
surd as  a  philosophy,  186 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  theories  of, 
4 

Milton,  John,  epic  of,  3  ;  verse 
on  death  by,  138 

Mind,  as  product  of  the 
brain,  182 

Moleschott,  falsity  of  state- 
ent  by,  184 

N 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  saying  of, 

IO2 

Niobe,  story  of,  158 
O 

Order,  the  God  of,  157;  in 
the  universe,  196 


Pain,  promise  of  Revelation 
about,  68;  the  relation  of 
goodness  to,  69 ;  nature  of, 
69;  lower  forms  of,  70; 
advantage  to  animals  of, 
74;  degrees  of,  79;  causes 
of,  81;  relation  to  con- 


sciousness,    85;     develop- 
ment    through,     103;     as 
punishment,  159 
Plato,  the  teaching  of,  113 
Pope  Alexander,  creed  of,  3 
Psalms,   the,    place   in  lyric 
literature  of  the  world,  14 
Psalmist,       the,       quotation 
from,  8;  the  experience  of, 

R 

Reincarnation,  the  teaching 
of,  60;  difficulties  in  the 
idea  of,  61,  62 

Research,       psychical,      the 
study  of,  191 
S 

Scientists,  mistakes  made  by, 

185;  the  devices  of,  187 
Seneca,  the  thought  of,  104 
Shakespeare,  William,  Ham- 
let's Soliloquy,  139;  quota- 
tion on  old  age  from,  176 
Sill,  E.  R.,  poem  by,  152 
Socrates,  the  reply  of,  138 
Spencer,    Herbert,   belief  of, 
1 86;  logical  reasoning  by, 
189;  ideas  about  personal 
consciousness,  303 
Spirits,      disbelief      in      the 
agency  of,  19;  of  the  dead, 
25;    good    and    evil,     26; 
ideas   of   the    Greeks   and 
Romans  regarding,  26;  He- 
brew attitude  toward,  28, 
35;  power  of,  36;  instances 
of  healing  by,  37 
Spiritualism,  theory  of,  180; 
illustrations  of  theory  of, 


Index 


219 


181;  scientific  thought  re- 
garding, 186-187;  belief 
of  man  in,  190 

Stoic,  the  ideas  of  the  Ro- 
man, 104 

Sympathy,  the  growth  of,  69 ; 
nature's  lack  of,  72;  the 
delights  of,  87,  88 


Tennyson,  Alfred,  quotations 
from,  2,  69 

Testament,  the  New,  "the 
prince  of  the  powers  of  the 
air"  mentioned  in,  35; 
spirits  in,  36,  37;  discrep- 
ancies of,  40;  definition 
of  God  in,  50;  teaching 
of,  1 60 

Testament,  the  Old,  doctrine 
of  the  Fall  in,  7-8;  final 
punishment  in,  9;  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  teaching 
in,  10 ;  the  teaching  of 
punishment  in,  37;  so- 
called  miracles  in,  49 

Theist,  problems  of  the,  5 

Theology,  Christian,  explan- 
ation of  evil  by,  30;  un- 
fairness of,  32;  immortal- 
ity of,  33,  37;  Hebrew,  117; 
teaching  about  death  of, 


133,  140;  of  St.  Augustine, 

146 
Troy,  siege  of,   26;  story  of 

the,  157 
Tyndall,  statement  by,  186 

W 

Weakness,  final  mental,  175 
White,    Blanco,    sonnet    by, 

149 

Wisdom,  the  essential  of,  128 
Wordsworth,  William,  verse 

by,  93 

World,  the,  conditions  of,  2 ; 
suffering  in,  6 ;  punishment 
in  another,  31;  supposed 
chastening  by  God  of,  39; 
natural  law  in,  49,  51; 
God's  intention  regarding, 
59;  inequalities  in,  59,  61; 
characteristics  of  the  mod- 
ern, 68;  attitude  of  the 
modern,  75;  growth  of, 
in;  a  bird's-eye  view  of, 
114;  theories  regarding, 
125;  a  spiritual  gymna- 
sium, 129;  existence  of, 
155;  as  a  primary  school, 
174;  the  spiritual,  187;  a 
good,  200 

Z 
Zoroaster,  teaching  of,  115 


By  Minot  J.  Savage 

LIFE  BEYOND  DEATH. 

Being  a  Review  of  the  World's  Beliefs  on  the  subject,  a 
Consideration  of  Present  Conditions  of  Thought  and  Feeling, 
Leading  to  the  Question  as  to  whether  it  can  be  Demon- 
strated as  a  Fact.  To  which  is  added  an  Appendix  Containing 
Some  Hints  as  to  Personal  Experiences  and  Opinions.  8°, 
pp.  342  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  •  .  $i.5<> 

"  The  book  is  one  that  everyone  can  and  ought  to  read.  There  are  no 
technicalities  of  style  to  offer  an  excuse  for  passing  it  by.  No  unintel- 
ligible philosophy  or  speculative  formulas  lie  at  the  bottom  of  the  discus- 
sion. It  is  all  in  plain  English.  Dr.  Savage  has  the  excellent  knack  of 
putting  profound  problems  into  every-day  language.  He  states  the  issues 
and  dilemmas  of  present  thought  with  remarkable  clearness,  and  with  as 
much  boldness  as  clearness,  challenging  every  mental  temper  except  cour- 
age and  intelligent  thinking.  These  are  rare  qualities,  and  ought  to  give 
the  work  a  wide  reading  even  among  those  who  are  not  prepared  to  fol- 
low its  sympathies."— Professor  JAMES  H.  HYSLOP,  in  The  Christian 
Register. 

THE  PASSING   AND  THE   PERMANENT   IN 
RELIGION. 

Uniform  with  "  Life  Beyond  Death."     8°         .         $1.35  net 

By  mail $1.50 

"  Dr.  Savage  devotes  the  first  chapter  to  pointing  out  the  accidental  and 
the  permanent  in  religion.  Truth,  love  and  service  are  what  all  religions 
have  striven  for,  and  are,  consequently,  the  permanent  religious  ideals. 
In  the  chapter  on  Theologies  and  Theology  it  is  shown  that  theology,  like 
religion,  abides,  but  that  theologies,  like  religions,  pass  away.  '  So  long 
as  man  feels  and  loves,  he  will  be  religious ;  so  long  as  he  thinks,  he 
will  be  theological.'  The  universe  is  progressive  and  intelligent,  and  re- 
ligion and  life  are  one,  at  the  heart  of  the  world.  Man  is,  as  Darwin 
says,  the  result  of  evolution,  which  process,  however,  is  destined  to  carry 
him  on  to  his  ideal,  which  is  the  likeness  of  God.  An  interesting  chapter 
is  that  on  the  different  hells  imagined  by  man,  and  the  lines  of  Omar,  as 
giving  a  poetic  idea  of  the  true  nature  of  hell,  are  quoted : 
Heaven  but  the  vision  of  fulfilled  desire, 
And  hell  the  shadow  of  a  soul  on  fire." 

Commercial  A  dm  >  ztser» 

Q.  P.  PUTNA/TS  SONS 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 


BY  MINOT  J.   SAVAGE 
Can  Telepathy  Explain? 

Results  of  Psychical  Research 

i6mo,  net,  $1.00.    (By  mail,  $1.10) 

Dr.  Savage  here  discusses  problems  that  have  vexed  intelli- 
gent minds  probably  to  a  greater  extent  than  any  others, 
saving  those  of  the  religious  life.  He  states  a  great  number 
of  well-authenticated  instances  of  apparently  spiritistic  revela- 
tion or  communication.  His  discussion  is  frank  and  fearless. 
This  work  merits  the  widest  reading,  for  he  deals  with  facts 
and  experiences. 

Life's  Dark  Problems 

or,  Is  This  a  Good  World? 

Crown  octavo,  net,  $1.35.    (By  mail,  $1.50) 

CONTENTS:  The  Answer  of  Job ;  Some  Theo- 
logical Answers;  The  Divine  Government;  Pain; 
Life's  Incompleteness;  Moral  Evil;  Death;  Acci- 
dents and  Calamities;  Mental  Disease  and  Decay; 
Is  God  a  Father? 

"  We  find  in  his  writings  what  we  can  only  call  an  almost 
unique  cleanness.  He  is,  every  minute  and  at  every  turn,  a 
manifest  thinker,  but  on  very  simple  lines.  It  is  evident  that 
he  is  trying  to  see  the  thing  that  is,  and  wants  neither  to  be 
popular  nor  profound.  He  indulges  in  very  little  rhetoric:  he 
wastes  no  words  :  he  is  not  engaged  in  building  up  any  case  : 
he  is  not  prejudiced  in  favor  of  any  view  :  he  is  not  hampered 
with  any  conventional  restraints  nor  tinged  with  any  sectional 
dyes.  He  is  simply  a  free  man  trying  to  find  the  truth  ;  and 
it  is  such  a  comfort  to  get  hold  of  a  man  like  that  ! " — Light, 
London. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  LONDON 


DT       ON  THE  LAST 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


DOT     mi 


m 


MAR2619C3    - 


Jll 


•  ,v 

*  "i-urf**^*! 


OCT  2  2'63  -9 


REC'D  LD 


MAR28<64-3P 


28 


LD  21A-50m-ll,'62 
(D3279slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YC  30494' 


LOAN  DEPT 


LD  62A-20W-9/63 
(E709slO)94l2A 


